The Malaysian government had made the announcement of reforming the public sector accounting by changing from cash accounting system to accruals accounting system. When the government made the announcement, it gave a huge shock to the preparers of the governmental financial reporting. It is believed that by the year 2015, all components of public sector would fully adopt the accruals accounting system. The time to prepare for the implementation process is short compared to other countries that have successfully implemented the accruals accounting in their public sector. When assessed against the stimuli for change in public sector accounting the barriers to change as outlined in Lüder Contingency Model is seems clear that it is a managerialism driven stimulus that best explains the Malaysian government’s change to accruals accounting . Therefore, it urged the preparers of the public sector financial report, whom in this case are the public sector accountants, to be ready for the change. One of the limitation barrier that affect the effectiveness of accruals accounting system in public sector accounting is the attitude of the user of the accounting system. The objective of the study is to examine the mediating effect of attitude on perception of public sector accountants towards the intention to implement the accruals accounting system in public sector. Questionnaires were distributed and analyzed using Likert scale. It was found that attitude and perception do contribute towards the intention of the accountants to implement accruals accounting in public sector.
Ahmad, N. N., Mazlan, S. N., Ahmad, S. D., & Pangat, M. H. Z. (2015). “Challenges of Accruals Accounting Implementation in Malaysian Accountant General’s Department.” International Journal of Business, Economics and Law, Vol. 8.
Allport, G. W. (1935). Attitudes. In C. A. Murchison (Ed.), A handbook of social psychology (pp. 798 – 844). Worcester, MA: Clark University Press.
Baron, R. M., & Kenny, D. A. (1986). The moderator–mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. Journal of personality and social psychology,51(6), 1173.
Carlin, T. M. (2003). Accruals Accounting & Financial Reporting in the Public Sector: Reframing the Debate. Australia: MGS Working Papers in Management.
Connolly, C., and Hyndman, N. (2006), ‘The Actual Implementation of Accruals Accounting: Caveats from a Case within the UK Public Sector’, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 272–90.
Davis, F. D. (1991). Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of information technology. MIS Quarterly, 13, 319-340.
Dunham, R. B., Grube, J. A., Gardner, D. G., Cummings, L. L., & Pierce, J. L. (1989). The development of an attitude toward change instrument.
Eby, L. T., Adams, D. M., Russell, J. E., & Gaby, S. H. (2000). Perceptions of organizational readiness for change: Factors related to employees' reactions to the implementation of team-based selling. Human relations,53(3), 419-442.
Elias, S. M. (2009). Employee Commitment in Times of Change: Assessing the Importance of Attitudes Toward Organizational Change†. Journal of Management, 35(1), 37-55.
Faghihi, A., & Allameh, S. M. (2012) Investigating the Influence of Employee Attitude toward Change and Leadership Style on Change Preparedness by SEM (Case Study: Isfahan Municipality). International Journal, 2. Financial Accountability & Management, 8(4), pp. 281–297.
Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating Structural Equation Models with Unobservable Variables and Measurement Error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(1), 39–50.
Hair, J., Black, W., Anderson, R. E., and Tatham, R. (1998): Multivariate Data Analysis,
5th ed., Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
Hair, J. F., Hult, G. T.M., Ringle, C. M., & Sarstedt, M. (2014). A primer on partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Los Angeles: Sage Publication.
Hepworth, N. (2003), Preconditions for Successful Implementation of Accruals Accounting in Central Government, Public Money and Management, January 2003.
Hinton, P., Brownlow, C., McMurray, I., and Cozens, B. (2004): SPSS explained.
London: Routledge.
International Federation of Accountants. (2005), ‘International Public Sector Accounting Standards and Statistical Bases of Financial Reporting: An Analysis of Differences and Recommendations for Convergence’, Research Report (January).
Jasmine, A. L., Yeap, T., Ramayah., & Soto-Acosta, P. (2015) Factors propelling the adoption of m-learning among students in higher education. The International Journal on Networked Business.
Hauke, J., and Kossowski, T. (2011): Comparison of values of Pearson’s and
Spearman’s correlation coefficients on the same sets of data. Bogucki Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Pozna? 2011, pp. 87–93.
Hair, J. F., Ringle, C. M., and Sarstedt, M. (2011). PLS-SEM: Indeed a silver bullet. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, vol. 19, no. 2 (spring 2011), pp. 139–151.
Likierman, A. (2000). Changes to managerial decision-taking in UK central government. Management Accounting Research, 11(2), 253-261.
Lye, J., Perera, H., & Rahman, A. (2005). The evolution of accruals-based Crown (government) financial statements in New Zealand. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 18(6), 784-815.
Lüder, K. (1994). The ‘contingency model’reconsidered: experiences from Italy, Japan and Spain. Perspectives on Performance Measurement and Public Sector Auditing. Berne: Paul Haupt Publishers, 1
In-Text Citation: (Azhari, Osman, Rashid, Mohamed, & Ghazali, 2018)
To Cite this Article: Azhari, M. I. M., Osman, A. H., Rashid, M. Z. A., Mohamed, N., & Ghazali, M. Z. (2018). Moving Towards a Better Governance: Implementation of Accruals Accounting in Public Sector. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 8(4), 1047–1063.
Copyright: © 2018 The Author(s)
Published by Human Resource Management Academic Research Society (www.hrmars.com)
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seen at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode