Browsing by Author "Ryan, Christine"

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Open Access
Users of Local Government Annual Reports: an Exploratory Study
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2001) Mack, Janet; Ryan, Christine; Dunstan, Keitha
The nature of financial reporting in the public sector in Australia has undergone substantial change in the last twenty years. One result has been the promulgation of public sector accounting standards based on the private sector conceptual framework for general purpose financial reports. A central key to this framework is the existence of users and their needs. This framework emphasises the provision of information for users for the purpose of decision making. Critics of the framework as it applies to the public sector claim that it lacks empirical substantiation and ignores the complexity and diversity of public sector institutions. This paper examines and analyses the annual report distribution lists for local government authorities within Queensland and provides empirical evidence on distribution patterns. The study finds that there are user groups which fall outside the categories identified by the conceptual framework. Further, there is a wide variety in the dissemination lists of local government authorities and cross sectional differences in the distribution patterns for urban and rural local government authorities. The results of this research raise important questions for public sector accounting regulators regarding the appropriateness of assuming that there exists a homogeneous set of users for all public sector entity types.
Open Access
The Value of Public Sector Annual Reports and Annual Reporting Awards as a Signal of Management Performance
(Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2001) Ryan, Christine; Dunstan, Keitha; Brown, Jennet
Australian public sector reforms have emphasised the accountability of agencies for the performance of management. Despite considerable diversity in public sector organisations, annual reports have been promoted as an appropriate tool to discharge the accountability of all government agencies. However, there remains an absence of consistent empirical evidence as to the value of the annual report for reporting on management performance. Further, debates about the role of public sector annual reports often become intertwined with notions of the quality of reports. Prior research has investigated the incentives of agencies to enter annual reporting awards as a means of signalling the quality of management. However, the research ignores the possibility that the value of annual reports to discharge performance accountability and the value of entry into an annual reporting award may vary depending on the type of public sector agency and on the relationships between stakeholders. This study focuses on the Queensland public sector and the Queensland Annual Reporting Award (QARA) and uses a series of case studies to examine the value of the annual report as a means of discharging accountabilities. The results reveal a cross sectional variation in the perceived value of the annual report in discharging accountabilities. In some cases it was thought that alternative forms of communication provided a more suitable means to discharge the accountability demands of stakeholders. Further, while annual reporting awards provide a mechanism to supply a credible signal of quality, it will only be used in those situations where the participants identify direct benefits of entry.