A contingency model of governmental accounting innovations in the political-administrative environment

This paper proposes a comprehensive contingency model of introducing accounting innovations in the public sector. Based on a comparative study of the United States, Canada, and several European countries, the model consists of four modules: stimuli, social structural variables about information users, structural variables describing the politico-administrative system, and implementation barriers. Whether a more informative accounting system is introduced depends on the specific combination of favorable and unfavorable conditions in these modules. Favorable conditions exist in Canada, Denmark, Sweden, the United States at the federal level, and those states that adopted GAAP. Conditions unfavorable to innovations prevail in Germany and France, and to a lesser extent in the United Kingdom and the European Community