Implementation of the international public sector accounting standards in Europe. Variations on a global theme
研究了九个欧洲国家在实施国际公共部门会计准则时偏离原版的原因，并提出了一个分类框架，指出这些偏离可能削弱会计准则旨在实现的财务报告可比性。
As part of introducing accrual accounting in the public sector, many governments have – voluntarily – implemented the International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) for financial reporting. Amongst other claimed benefits, IPSAS have been argued to facilitate comparison of adopters’ financial reports and to lead to favourable conditions on credit markets. However, governments that are confronted with the implementation decision face a trade-off between unaltered adoption, partial adoption, adaptation and non-adoption of standards. Drawing on insights from the literature on standardization and practice variation, this paper analyses the reasons, expressed by various actors from nine European countries, for deviating from implementing unaltered IPSAS and proposes a taxonomy of these reasons. The results show that, first, substantial deviations exist, and second, there is a plethora of reasons for them. These deviations are presented and then structured in the further course of the paper. As a consequence of deviations, achieving comparability as the central aim of standardization runs the risk of being undermined.