Cases in Public Sector Accounting

This book presents an extensive set of applied material dealing with financial and management accounting practice in the public sector. It is designed to be used in conjunction with one or more of the established texts on the concepts and principles of public sector accounting.

The authors present fourteen original case studies of financial and management accounting practice across a range of public sector organizations. The cases are grouped by type of organization because many of them deal with a number of reporting and measurement themes and issues, for example, principles and methods of financial accounting, issues of management control and financial management, and accountability to multiple stakeholders.

All the case studies contain accounting information extracted from published financial statements or internal management records. The book includes short cases, where students are expected to collect additional information themselves, as well as longer, more detailed cases which are intended to encourage students to sift through the data for the relevant facts. Each case concludes with discussion questions.

Detailed notes for discussion on the end-of-case questions are given in the Guidance Notes for Lecturers - available free of charge for those adopting this book for course use.

After completing an MA by Thesis at the University of Manchester I trained as a Chartered Accountant with Arthur Andersen in Birmingham. After qualification in 1975 I took up an appointment as Lecturer in Accounting in the Department of Accounting and Finance, University of Manchester. In 1979-80 I was Visiting Associate Professor of Accounting, Tulane Business School, New Orleans In 1984 I moved to the University of Essex as Senior Lecturer in Accounting in the Department of Economics and was subsequently promoted to Reader in 1987. In 1988 I was the founding Head of the Department of Accounting and Financial Management, University of Essex, and was appointed the first Professor in the Department in 1989. Subsequently, I served as Dean of the School Social Sciences (1995-97), Dean of the Graduate School (1997-99), Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Academic Standards (1999-2002), and Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Academic Development (2002-06). In 2001 I was an Erskine Fellow at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand and since 2006 I have been a Visiting Professor of Management at CASS Business School. In August 2008 I was appointed the Director of the newly established Essex Business School, a merger of the School of Accounting, Finance and Management in Colchester, and the School of Entrepreneurship & Business in Southend.

Robert T Wearing is a Reader in the Department of Accounting, Finance and Management at the University of Essex. Previously he was a Lecturer in Accounting, University of Kent at Canterbury and has worked as a financial analyst in industry. He is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and has published a number of articles in academic and professional journals.