considering the relationship between management accounting and financial
accounting when examining public sector accounting change.1
Incorporating responses to these three difficulties of Luder’s model has
resulted in development of a variant model. The proposed model consists of three
groups of actors that respond in part to each other but also react to a stimuli for
change whilst taking into account barriers which impede the change. The model
thus has five parts:
1. External stimuli for change (an exogenous force): relatively wide discussion
centred on a perceived problem and offering a philosophically based solution
to that problem.
2. Promoters of change: people and organisations with a vested interest in
wanting change.
3. Producers of information: public servants in central agencies and government
agency managers (CEOs, accountants, line managers).
4. Users of information: politicians holding responsibility for individual
portfolios or whole-of-government as well as Opposition politicians and
Parliamentary adjuncts such as the Auditors-General, Public Accounts
Committees and Parliamentary Committees.
5. Implementation barriers (an endogenous force): characteristics of the public
sector and its accounting system that act to restrict the options available to
implement change.
The model is depicted in Figure 1 (see over) and each of the five parts of the model
is briefly described below. For each of the model’s parts a hypothesis is proposed
and subsequently considered in light of the data revealed in the history presented in
this paper.