Abstract:
Certain organisational responses such as the ones from Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) to the demands of their institutional environment are central to this study. In today’s economic climate and under the existing political and social conditions, public sector organisations including HEIs have had to reassess their management practices to become more accountable and efficient in their use of public sector resources thus adopting the New Public Management principles. In this vein, accounting was expected to play a major role in providing financial information. This information would then be utilized towards the improvement of the public sector’s performance and accountability in order to achieve efficiency, effectiveness and economy and the presence of the accrual basis accounting system has constituted an important change component.
The current research focuses on providing an answer to the question of how HEIs in Greece responded to governmental pressures for accounting reform during the decade of 1998-2008; specifically, it focuses on the extent to which HEIs implemented the accrual accounting system and, if so or not, what was the key role of the isomorphic and intra organizational dynamics in this respect. The aim of this research is to assist in providing a deep understanding of the external and internal forces that influence the adoption, implementation and practical use of the management accounting system in specific settings resulting thus to new daily accounting practices.
The theoretical framework employed, draws on insights from a hybrid of institutional theory strands such as Old Institutional Economics and New Institutional Theory and perspectives on change management theories. The epistemology interpretive approach has been suggested as the most appropriate and a case study research strategy has been adopted for the scope of this study including an in part survey strategy. The Greek higher education system and the HEIs as its components are considered to be the case study under investigation. The complexity of the phenomena under investigation as well as the different levels of their analysis implied the need for a mixed methods approach in order to best cope with the research problem.
Based strictly on an investigation of the existing literature and the analysis of the derived findings by the survey structured questionnaire and the face-to-face interviews, it is assumed that isomorphic forces have been insufficiently activated by the external environment in order to push the Greek HEIs forward towards the adoption of the accounting reform demanded by the legislator (Presidential Decree 205/1998). There was also evidence that the intra organizational dynamics, such as institutional and change dynamics that have been activated in each HEI seem to affect the attempted accounting change driving thus the entire process from the starting point to the end of the accounting change process. Data collected during the face-to-face interviews suggests that the intra organizational dynamics, activated within each individual HEI that implemented the accrual accounting system, have not resulted sufficiently to the development of new accounting routines, considering them as the positive outcome of the successful accounting change process.
The current research contributes to the understanding of the attempted management accounting change in Greek HEIs during the decade 1998-2008. The distinctive findings obtained in this study will also contribute towards gaining further knowledge in the process of providing a viable explanation of the differences in the implementation of the accrual accounting systems and in showing how the interplay of various theoretical perspectives may be crucial in explaining management accounting change implementation. Finally, it provides helpful insights to practitioners regarding the decision making process in the light of the continuously changing management accounting environment.
