The value of public sector annual reports and the contribution of annual reporting awards’, paper presented at

Australian public sector reforms have emphasised performance management. This has lead to the promotion of quality annual reports as an imperative to the appropriate discharge of accountability for government agencies. In an effort to improve the quality of reporting, organisations in Australia have organised public sector annual reporting awards. Despite these moves there remains considerable disagreement in the normative literature and an absence of consistent empirical evidence as to who uses annual reports and what their information needs are. Researchers who have investigated the incentives for entry into annual reporting awards have concluded that entering annual report awards provides an opportunity to signal the quality of management. Both the normative and positive research ignores the possibility that the value of annual reports to discharge accountability and the value of entry in annual reporting awards 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 develops a theoretical framework that addresses the multiple accountability relationships in the different types of Australian public sector agencies. A series of case studies of a cross section of Queensland public sector agencies confirm that the annual report was perceived by account preparers to be an important tool for the discharge of accountabilities. However, the perceived value of the annual report varied for some types of public sector agencies and for some types o