Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Applied Research in Business, Management and Economics
Year: 2024
DOI:
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The Attitude of Public Sector Accountants Towards Non-Financial Reporting
Ivana Pajković, Martina Dragija Kostić, Nives Botica Redmayne
ABSTRACT:
The role of accounting in the public sector is to provide the information necessary for decisionmaking and accountability. In response to the changes in the public sector, a new form of reporting is emerging, namely non-financial reporting. It is expected that accountants involved in financial reporting will also be involved in the preparation of non-financial reports. This paper therefore aims to investigate how accountants perceive non-financial reporting and whether they believe that they should be involved in the process of preparing non-financial reports. The research was conducted using a questionnaire sent to public sector accountants in Croatia from February to April 2022. The results of the study show that accountants are not overly positive about non-financial reporting, i.e. apart from believing that non-financial reporting will become more important in the future, they disagree or are quite undecided about the current need to prepare non-financial reports. Although accountants believe that they are in the best position to assess financial sustainability, they do not believe that they should be involved in the process of preparing non-financial reports. Our study contributes to the literature on non-financial reporting in the public sector and to the literature on public sector accountants’ attitudes towards nonfinancial reporting.
keywords: public sector, accountants, non-financial reporting, challenges, questionnaire