Public value and public sector accounting research: a structured literature review

Purpose – The paper investigates the role of accounting within the fragmented development of public value literature by reviewing the corpus of scholarly contributions that aims to address the relevance and impact of accounting studies within the public value theory. Findings – The lack of empirical research and the limited number of papers on how to account for the creation of public value means that much effort and work is required from accounting scholars to contrast the “theoretical stagnation” on the topic that could endanger the possibility to achieve a deeper understanding of how to govern the public value creation process. Practical implications – Existing knowledge on public value will be reinforced by new contributions on the topic that consider how to measure value, which would enable politicians and managers to govern the value-creation process more effectively. Social Implications – Decisions made by policy makers at a macro level and public managers at a micro level can be influenced by making “visible” the public value created by a public administration, which would be an important aid in the achievement of desirable societal outcomes. Originality/value – The paper develops the first wide-ranging Structured Literature Review on public value accounting and can be a starting point to develop new research avenues, both in the fields of accountability/external reporting and management accounting and performance management.