Dr. Geiger et Cd. Ittner, THE INFLUENCE OF FUNDING SOURCE AND LEGISLATIVE REQUIREMENTS ON GOVERNMENT COST ACCOUNTING PRACTICES, Accounting, organizations and society, 21(6), 1996, pp. 549-567
This paper provides preliminary evidence on the determinants of cost a
ccounting practices in government agencies. Drawing on institutional a
nd contingency theories of management accounting choice, we examine tw
o potential influences on the design and use of government cost system
s. legal requirements to be self-funding and mandated requirements for
cost accounting data. We test these hypotheses using survey data from
the U.S. General Accounting Office. The empirical evidence indicates
that organizations using cost system output to satisfy external requir
ements tend to implement more ''elaborate'' cost accounting systems th
an units without external requirements, but are no more likely to use
cost system data for internal purposes. in contrast, government organi
zations that are required to ''pay their own way'' by fully recovering
costs through revenues or fees not only implement more elaborate syst
ems than units funded by appropriated budgets or reimbursement of expe
nses by other government units, but also tend to make more extensive u
se of cost system output for a wide variety of internal purposes rangi
ng from pricing to management control. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Sci
ence Ltd