Suchergebnisse

This paper addresses the issue of complexity in the administrative processes in public institutions; in particular, accounting routines and processes are examined. Back-office activities, although having a merely supporting role in the delivery of public services, are often quite complex and use a significant amount of public institutions' resources. However, the literature reveals a scarce use of accounting data by politicians and citizens. While the relation between complexity and costs has been the subject of major research in the business world, this issue is still unexplored with regard to the administrative processes of public institutions. This paper is based on an in-depth analysis of two cases in the higher education sector.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of full accrual accounting on the Italian public universities and, in this context, how some technical-accounting problems typical of public sector (recognition and valuation issues) have been addressed. An additional purpose investigated in this paper is the role of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSASs) in helping to overcome these technical-accounting issues, for the case under examination.Design/methodology/approach– The paper involves studying whether, and to what degree, some of the accounting choices made by the universities complied with the principles of full accrual accounting for several specific accounting registrations characterised by the presence of recognition and valuation issues. During this investigation, the paper also analyses whether the universities followed the accounting rules set out by the IPSAS Board.Findings– The findings highlight that, in general, there is a low degree of compliance with full accrual accounting principles and they also revealed that IPSASs do not provide any detailed guidelines that can help universities in overcoming the recognition and valuation problems typical of the public sector.Originality/value– The analysis presented in the paper confirms the findings of previous literature identifying a low level of compliance to full accrual accounting principles. This research shed light also on the longstanding debate about the role of IPSASs in promoting full accrual accounting in the public sector, revealing the scarce contribution of IPSASs to this process.

Gender equity is a topic of significant interest for universities, who are called upon to plan strategies and measures to increase gender equality in line with international policies. With a qualitative methodology based on manual content analysis, the paper aims to understand whether and how this report could positively assess a university's actions for reaching SDG 5. This study's results show that the CRUI guidelines can be used by universities to disclose gender policies that may be of interest to stakeholders, and can also be synthesized in THE ranking, increasing university visibility. The present study could be helpful for universities, regulatory bodies, policy makers, and agency rankings to help them identify the most relevant gender items on which to focus their attention.

AbstractThis paper aims at analyzing the connection among the corporate social responsibility (CSR), stakeholder engagement and universities, proposing the analysis of universities' financial reporting to draft their third mission and social impact. Particularly, our analysis is based on the sensitivity demonstrated by the Italian public universities in terms of transparency on issues of social responsibility with reference to the heritage assets' reporting and disclosure. We used a qualitative methodology, adopting the content analysis to collect data from the financial reporting of all Italian public universities. Our findings show as heritage assets represent the strategic area for the assessment of the third mission and social impact by the Italian universities even if the level of their disclosure seems low. Evidence of our paper is directed to support the academic community, practitioners, and policymakers proposing a new theoretical and practical advance of the CSR and stakeholders engagement' studies.