Public sector creative accounting: a literature review

Abstract

Creative Accounting (CA) is not a new issue in Accounting literature. Several studies and literature reviews identify the opportunities, incentives, methods and objectives that guide such a practice in the private sector. Very few studies, however, are found in the public sector literature, regarding it’s conceivable that public sector organizations also face incentives and have the opportunities to manipulate their financial and budgetary performance. Indeed, there is a lack of comprehension about creative accounting in the public sector that must be filled by literature. This study aims to contribute to this emergent debate trough a literature review, analyzing published research by seven perspectives: (i) journal and year of publication; (ii) geographic area and period of analysis; (iii) the methodology and method of analysis applied; (iv) the subject of research (i.e., who practiced CA); (v) the incentives and opportunities for CA; (vi) the target-user of mislead information; (vii) the CA techniques reported and the approach applied to assess CA. The main findings exhibit a predominance of papers published and focusing in the European context, the papers were published on a concentrated sample of journals which editorial is predominantly based in Europe. The majority of the paper use a quantitative approach. Some interesting research opportunities are discussed in conclusion.