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Public sector accounting research in the higher education sector: a systematic literature review

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Abstract

Management techniques, such as marketization and performance measurement of academic activities, can be evidenced in universities around the globe. They have given rise to extensive research in the higher education sector. This paper provides a systematic literature review of 236 papers on public sector accounting research in higher education from 83 analysed journals from the three areas of accounting, public management and administration, and higher education between 1980 and 2014. We analyse research location, theoretical approaches, research methods, and topics used in these fields and their change over time. We also compare our results with those of reviews on general public sector accounting research. Our results show a dominance of research from Anglo-American countries. The majority of papers informed by a radical/alternative theoretical approach use descriptive case and field research whereas studies with a functionalist approach apply mathematical analyses, surveys and archival research. In terms of topics, high importance is attached to accountability/governance, performance measurement, external reporting, and budgeting in which the adoption of accounting systems and their usefulness is often discussed. Furthermore, we cluster papers in 12 groups and find a highly fragmented body of research reflecting the different specifics of the higher education sector. From this we derive opportunities for future research.

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Notes

  1. van Helden (2005) considers the topics, theories and research methods applied in the reviewed research studies and weighs them equally. In this case one research study dealt with two public sector branches which results in a coding of 0.5 points each.

  2. The Journal Quality List by Harzing is based on different journal rankings, see http://www.harzing.com/jql.html.

  3. Journals without any papers on PSAR in the HE sectors are Abacus, Account Educ: Int J, Account Eur, Account Hist J, Account Hist Rev, Account Public Interest, Account Res J, Account Rev, Adm Soc, Adv Account, Adv Manag Account, Asia-Pac J Account Econ, Behav Res Account, Contemp Account Res, Gov, Inf Org, Int J Account, Int J Account Audit Perform Eval, Int J Account Inf Syst, Int J Econ Account, Int J Manag Financ Account, Int J Public Sect Perform Manag, Int Public Manag J, Int Public Manag Rev, Int Rev Public Adm, Issues Account Educ, J Account Audit Financ, J Account Educ, J Account Lit, J Account Res, J Bus Financ Account, J Contemp Account Econ, J Financ Quant Anal, J Int Account Res, J Int Financ Manag Account, J Public Econ, J Public Policy, Public Adm Dev, Public Adm Q, Res Account Regul, Rev Account Financ, Rev Account Stud, Rev Quant Financ Account, Soc Environ Account J andSoc Policy Adm.

  4. The complete linkage clustering technique has been found to generate the most compact clustering solutions (Hair et al. 2006).

  5. For an overview on distance measures for binary and nominal data see Choi et al. (2010).

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Acknowledgments

The authors are indebted to Jan van Helden and Giuseppe Grossi for giving helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. The authors would like to thank participants at the 8th European Network for Research in Organisational and Accounting Change (ENROAC) Conference in Lisbon (Portugal) as well as participants at the 13th Comparative International Governmental Accounting Research (CIGAR) PhD seminar in Ghent (Belgium) in 2011 for their invaluable comments on a first draft of this paper. The authors also appreciate the remarks and recommendations of two anonymous reviewers and of the editor.

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    Ulrike Schmidt & Thomas Günther

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Schmidt, U., Günther, T. Public sector accounting research in the higher education sector: a systematic literature review. Manag Rev Q 66, 235–265 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11301-016-0120-0

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