Analytical and critical study of adoption of International Public Sector Accounting Standards using Institutional Theory and Economic networks theory

Abstract

The study aimed to analyze motives and benefits of adoption of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) and attempted to explain the role of environmental variables and systemic factors in each country when adopting IPSAS. The study achieved that objective using a survey, analysis of literature review and interviews with some accountants in the Egyptian Ministry of Finance and units of local administrations. The study found that there are many self-benefits of adopting IPSAS such as improving accountability, transparency and comparability of public sector information. But these benefits depend on the relevance of IPSAS with environmental variables and organizational factors of each country such as legal, political, economic, educational, cultural, regulatory and structural factors and the study found that legal and cultural factors are the most important factors among these factors. The researcher proposed a plan to issue accounting standards for the public sector in accordance with IPSAS, depending on two sets of rules: the administrative and organizational rules and technical rules.