صورت های مالی تلفیقی – یک چالش تازه برای مدیریت بخش دولتی Consolidated financial statements – a new challenge for the public sector administration

1. Introduction The increased organizational complexity, its myriad of objectives and the overriding requirement for public accountability has multiple implications. Reported to the degree of complexity, the traditional public sector annual reports show only a partial picture of their economic and financial activities (Tagesson, 2009), resulting in the threat of true and fair picture of the public sphere (Bundred, 2006). Being in the middle of these changes, most internal and external users of financial information cannot substantiate their decisions based on relevant and reliable information regarding the financial position, financial performance and cash flow of public entities. Some researchers sustain that the overcoming of these obstacles would imply two major accounting developments, parts of new public management and new public financial management (Hood, 1995): the accrual accounting (Ter Bogt and Van Helden, 2000; Ryan et al., 2007) and the consolidation of accruals at a whole of government level (Grossi, 2009; Wise, 2010). Placing the accrual concept in the public sphere creates multiple views. Some governments still consider the options for cash-based accounting as being more suitable for the governmental type of activities that are sometimes extremely heterogeneous (Grossi and Soverchia, 2011). Barton (1999) doubts the introduction of accrual accounting in the public sector because of the significant differences between the two sectors, such as the objectives and resource allocation systems. Benito et al. (2007) emphasize the necessity of taking into consideration the peculiarities of the public sector, although Chan (2003) is wondering about why governments imitate the private sector practices without a critical sense. Therefore, in the previous literature, we can notice that researchers are quite apprehensive on the application of accrual accounting and the imitation of private sector practices. However, the benefit of accrual accounting in the public sphere is heavily supported by the possibility of sustaining much better principles like efficiency, effectiveness, transparency and accountability (Lapsley and Oldfield, 2001). Public sector entities can effectively and efficiently achieve accountability by disclosing relevant and useful information to all interested parties for preventing corruption and wasting of public resources but also for building a trustful relationship between citizens and their governments (Lourenço et al., 2010). Transparency and accountability stimulate a “culture of openness” (Ştefănescu et al., 2016) within organizations (Hood, 2006). These are key elements for enhancing good governance in the public sector and for creating a positive political and social environment (Abu Bakar and Saleh, 2015). The European Commission (2013) fully supports the use of accrual-based accounting by public sector organizations, as it increases the accountability and transparency of their financial reports and provides better information for planning and management purposes.