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.

Written by two experienced lecturers, this is the first student-centered textbook to bridge the technical and theoretical aspects of management accounting change. Packed full of pedagogical features, including mini-cases, learning outcomes, key terms, article summaries, key concept boxes, real-world cases, chapter summaries and further reading suggestions and resources, it is clear and accessibly written, covering all the major emerging topics in management accounting theory. Discussing technical developments in management accounting from conventional cost accounting to contemporary strategic management accounting and beyond, in four parts it: shows how conventional cost accounting techniques and management control models evolved in line with the development of mass production and bureaucracy explores how recent developments such as customer and strategic orientations in business, flexible manufacturing, post-bureaucracy, network and virtual organizational technologies implicate in management accounting provides a number of alternative theories through which the transition of management accounting from mechanistic to post-mechanistic approaches can be explained – elaborating both rational and interpretive/critical theories. This excellent text meets a desperate need for an advanced management accounting textbook that incorporates theory and practice and is accessible and engaging for all those studying in this challenging area.