It is clear that accruals accounting is well embedded in
central government departments in the UK. From the interviews
it is seen that, under RAB, the accounting information
is complex, few managers understand it and there is limited
conviction that its provision has resulted in improved decision
making. Moreover, the introduction of RAB has led to
significant cost increases (at implementation and in use).
Whether, in the long term, this will change is unknown;
what is known is that some years after it went ‘live’, several
of the UK interviewees questioned its contribution.
In the RoI a comprehensive system of accruals accounting
does not operate (and looks unlikely in the near future).
The fact that almost 20 years ago the RoI apparently started
out on the same road as the UK is of interest. The factors
leading to a different arrival point may bemany including:
a rational choice based on pragmatism; a general tendency
for the RoI not to embraceNPMideas with excessive enthusiasm;
the weaker ideological and political thrust from the
centre; cultural differences; and the disappointing implementation
experience of the UK. It appears that amixture of
rational choice and differing logics provides an explanation
of what has happened. For the RoI, the change to accruals
accounting was a ‘road not taken’ and, as in Robert Frost’s
famous poem,3 a number of grounds for such a choice are
apparent. Using a very positive view of what occurred in
the RoI, perhaps, as could be the case with a range of NPM
reforms, a gradualist, ad-hoc, cherry picking, reflective process
was used (indicative of, in the words of Lounsbury
(2007), a differing RoI logic). Consequently, a comprehensive
accruals-accounting system has been considered
and discarded with respect to management accounts, with
more modest accruals adjustments made to fundamentally
cash-based AAs in respect of financial reporting. Maybe as
in the poem: ‘two roads diverged in a wood, and I–I took the
one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference’.
Whether such a road was taken by design or default (or a
mixture of the two) is unknown, but given the UK experience,
who is to say that the RoI road, a road less travelled
of late by many ‘modern’, western NPM countries, may not
have been the wiser choice.’.