Factors influencing financial employeers' readiness for accrual accounting adoption in Jordanian public sector

Abstract

Recently, the government of Jordan has followed the global trend in the implementation of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSASs). In 2014, the decision was taken to start the implementation process. Following that, the Jordanian Ministry of Finance announced in 2015 that the ministry has succeeded in implementing the IPSASs on cash accounting and announced its intention to transition towards accrual accounting. However, the adoption of a new accounting system may not be easy; a considerable gap exists due to the difficulty in changing the current accounting practices into entirely new accounting practices at the development and implementation stages. It is necessary to create readiness among the public sector financial employees in ensuring the successful adoption of the new accounting system. As such, this study intends to examine factors influencing financial employees’ readiness for accrual accounting adoption in Jordanian public sector. The present study identified several important factors influencing the readiness in adopting accrual accounting which are; human resource, organizational commitment and information technology. Moreover, two moderator variables are considered in this study, namely social relationship in the workplace and job satisfaction. This study applied multiple theories, namely Lewin’s Theory, Theory of Social Exchange, and Maslow’s Needs Theory. In addition, a quantitative approach was employed by distributed the questionnaires to 375 respondents enrolled at Jordanian General Budget Department using simple random sampling. The data were analyzed using Partial Least SquaresStructural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to verify the relationships between the variables. The results found significant positive relationships between human resource, organizational commitment, information technology and financial employees’ readiness for accrual accounting adoption. In addition, social relationship in the workplace could not moderate the relationship between human resource and financial employees’ readiness for accrual accounting adoption. Job satisfaction positively and negatively moderates the relationship between human resource, organizational commitment and financial employees’ readiness for accrual accounting adoption respectively. This study not only contributes in expanding the literature concerning accrual accounting adoption in Jordanian context, it’s also provides meaningful guideline to the government of Jordan for accrual accounting adoption, as well as providing insights on the critical success factors to ensure successful adoption process. Finally, some limitations and suggestions for future research were considered in this study