The decision of countries to implement IFRS standards, such as the adoption process by private and public entities, had consequences. The impact according to samples has core accounting elements: Fixed assets, inventories, Biological Assets, Intangibles, Sales income, Sales costs, Socio-environment, Inflation Adjustments, etc. I emphasize evaluating the impacts of adopting IFRS, insisting on incorporating a globally relevant topic into professional training. Regulation is a political process, but it requires a doctrinal base and deepening Accounting investigations, allowing positive influence on regulatory development and credibility to the discipline, providing quality information.
Citizens, not inhabitants or settlers
Article 15 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, of August 26, 1789, already established the right of society to hold all public agents accountable for its management.
Well, the accountability of public administrations must be based on high-quality public accounting systems put at the service of citizens.
The modernization of public accounting, as a priority part of the modernization of public administration, must evolve, urgently, from a purely budgetary accounting (oriented to the control of legality and accountability), towards the establishment of an accounting system more informative, comparable and useful for decision-making by users (voter-citizens, politicians and managers), that is, a more useful accounting system for management, also subject to the requirements of building regional groups, the introduction of the single currency and international needs.
The need to know the cost of public services provided is increasingly pressing.
Admitting the difficulty of implementing a single internal or management accounting system, due to the composition of the public sector based on complex organizations, in which there are different powers and responsibilities, different objectives and different sources of financing, it is evident that the information provided by the External or financial accounting does not cover all the information needs of the public sector.
Although there have been some attempts to implement cost accounting without much success, efforts should continue along this line of work, in order to clarify the use of public resources, determine the cost of providing services, reveal deviations in relation to the execution of the budget and to enable the presentation of high-quality data to the various recipients, mainly the external control bodies of public administrations and citizens in general.
The public sector, made up of a set of Administrations, entities and organizations, which although they are heterogeneous, all of them ultimately depend on a political body that establishes the guidelines for their actions and before which they are responsible for the management carried out..
From this dependence on political power, at least three characteristic notes are derived:
1. Submission to the budgetary regime, which is the manifestation of the political will in economic matters of the corresponding political body.
2. The management of the entire public sector is subject to controls of an accounting, financial, efficacy and legality nature, in order to verify its adequacy with the provisions and guidelines issued by the political bodies; and
3.ª All public sector entities, without exception, must render accounts of their management to the corresponding auditing bodies of accounts and, ultimately, to the Court of Auditors.
The obligation of accountability is present in the normative provisions throughout the history of the courts of accounts. Accountability, inherent to the rule of law and the principle of legality and democratic demand to make the participation of all citizens in political and economic life real and effective through democratic control of public administration, must be respected and supported by all public powers, obliged to promote the conditions and remove obstacles that fully impede or hinder the exercise of such participation.
The Legal System establishes the obligatory economic and budgetary control, both of the State and of the rest of the public, regional and local sector, so that their accounts are censored by the Court of Accounts and the autonomous external control bodies.
In order for such control to be carried out, that is, for the proper exercise of the supervisory function, it is necessary that the public sector as a whole, as accountants, render the accounts to the different external audit bodies that are attributed function, for which the legislator has put in the hands of the courts of accounts various mechanisms to achieve the provision of as many data, states, documents, antecedents or reports as requested, which starts, if not complied with, from the request threatening.
Concept and Generalities of Public Accounting.
Economic science deals with the questions that arise in relation to the satisfaction of the needs of individuals and of society, because in search of the aforementioned satisfaction, individuals carry out PRODUCTIVE ACTIVITIES. Through these activities, goods and services are obtained that are needed, understanding as goods all those means capable of satisfying needs. In summary, the economy deals with the way that individuals manage scarce resources for the satisfaction of needs (infinite according to some authors). This scarcity in the face of infinite needs defines the ECONOMIC PROBLEM.
Now these needs (subjective to each individual) also arise from the fact of living in society, in community, that is, there are PUBLIC NEEDS, understood as the entire population without economic, cultural, or racial discrimination, etc. that are given by the existence of the population. They are generated by that coexistence.
The STATE entity is in charge of satisfying those needs by order of the constitution (fundamental law for community life). And it does it year after year with the allocation of resources through the budget to satisfy what the state considers public needs. It is worth noting that with the formulation of the accounts that are part of the budget, the government prioritizes and defines what, in its opinion, are the public needs (even if it is the year for which the budget governs).
Returning to the constitutional allocation, it is worth saying that the Magna Carta implicitly orders the STATE to satisfy public needs, among other things with 2 concepts = 1 the annual practice of the budget (beyond one year it would be difficult to plan and estimate future needs) 2 the representation of the people that instructs Congress, controller of the Executive Power and ultimately who approves the draft budget and its execution.
In order to satisfy the needs, public and private individuals possess a patrimony (universality of law that people inevitably possess according to legal theories) that they administer. The existence of a patrimony, a natural or legal person that disposes of it and administers it and a series of acts that constitute such administration delineate the concept of HACIENDA.
Treasury is an economic coordination of human activity and assets. Action of the organs on the administrable matter. Individuals own a farm, as well as businesses, family and state etc. The PUBLIC FINANCE is the active economic coordination of people and economic assets, established by the inhabitants of a territory in order to satisfy the needs of the collective order. The people deliver goods to the STATE for them to manage and satisfy the needs that affect everyone.
Classification and Characteristics:
VOLUNTARY-COACTIVE. You cannot choose to belong to the public treasury, every individual participates in it, therefore the public treasury is TRANSITIONAL-LASTING. It derives from the permanence of the state itself.
INDEPENDENT DEPENDENT. The hacienda depends on the people indirectly and on the congress with its approvals directly. PRIVATE-PUBLIC. The latter belongs to the state entity.
PRODUCTION- CONSUMPTION. The first produces goods for the people. Production is the fundamental axis of the modern state. The state manages the different projects with efficiency evaluations, matching this concept to the returns that businessmen expect on the investments they make. The new financial administration law requires, in the presentation of the investment account executive to the congress, explanations aimed at evaluating the degree of compliance of the budget projects (amen of the groups of the items to that end) with measurement of activity, units of measurement of production. Coupling this concept, saving the differences, with the standard costs. The consumer estate uses the goods and services of others and exhausts them to its ends.
FOREX-INDIVIDUAL. According to the ability to be divided into smaller farms or not.
The Importance of Public Accounting in Our Times.
Subject
This discipline must account for the action carried out by the organs and the patrimonial variations produced. And as the conjugation of these elements (patrimony, organs, facts and acts), put into play, administratively they constitute the treasury of the State; then the subject of Public Accounting is the Public Treasury.
The State is the political Organization of a sedentary and social group through a legal order guaranteed by a sovereign power exercised by a body of officials that tends to achieve the common good.
Entity is everything that exists or can exist. In the life of the entity activities of all kinds are carried out, one of them is economic management.
Economic management is a series of coordinated economic operations, aimed at satisfying needs.
This sector of the conduct of the entities gives rise to their administrative activity of an economic nature; and it is in this sector where the concept of Finance arises.
The hacienda is inserted within the Economic Administration of the entity.
Object
Its purpose is to analyze the administrative management of public entities, but not in its entirety. He limits himself to studying economic administration; that is to say, the action of government, direction and execution oriented towards obtaining and applying economic means to achieve, with this employment, the satisfaction of the needs of the entity to which the estate belongs. Public Accounting has a double mission: Theoretical Knowledge of the administrative management of the Public Treasury to formulate and perfect a doctrine; and Practical Application of said doctrine to facilitate the organization, administration and control of the Public Treasury.
The first National Symposium of University Professors of Public Accounting (Bahía Blanca - May 1981) defined the study of the Public Treasury as an object of Public Accounting, from the points of view of its organization, management and control.
The Symposium pointed out that Public Accounting from these 3 points of view deals with:
The different functions of the Public Treasury, the State organs in charge of their fulfillment and the interrelationships between them.
The significance of the components of the budget and the monitoring of the different stages related to its execution; the contracting regime and the incidence of contracts; and the patrimonial variations in the Public Treasury.
The comparison between the predetermination of the functions and their fulfillment; of the kind and degree of responsibility of the agents who are in charge of managing the organs; and of the organs that verify and judge it.
Definition
Public Accounting is the discipline that, taking the basic principles and precepts of General Accounting, allows to register each and every one of the operations carried out by the state in all its areas, through the use of accounts referring to items, to demonstrate, in permanently, what are the stages that are being fulfilled both in terms of resources and expenses, aiming to provide at the end of the year, a general final state that shows what the true situation is at that time, taking as The main objective is to provide information that allows us to see to what extent public needs have been met or not.
It is the discipline that, taking the principles and precepts of the control of the General Accounting, adapts them to the administrative sphere of the State with the purpose of showing permanently, using for this, each and every one of the operations that the State performs, in order not only to display or accuse an accounting record but also to show, at the end of each fiscal year, to what extent or in what way the State has satisfied public needs, approaching or not to the general welfare. (According to Ovejero).
Bayetto : Defines Public Accounting is the discipline that deals with the economy of public finances, whose operations it studies together and in detail, in order to train and perfect, rationally and experimentally (and with a view to better compliance with its purpose) the administrative doctrine of that.
Professor Bayetto emphasizes its definition, in the economic aspect of the estate, this means that dealing with the Public Accounting of the study of the administrative management of public entities, he does not analyze that management in its entirety but is limited to the administration economic, that is, the activity aimed at obtaining resources and its correlative employment for the performance of public services.
Arévalo: Public Accounting has its own objective, which consists in the systematic application of the principles and precepts of the comptroller, taken from the general accounting, to the administrative activity of an economic-financial nature of the State, to reveal said activity, register it, expose it and appreciate it exactly. This presupposes a precise knowledge of the organization and management of public finances and a close and constant link in its operational process.
Matocq : Public accounting is the part of accounting that deals with giving the order to measure the scope, compliance and result of management and other events planned and occurred in the public treasury.
Public Accounting:
It is a discipline that has scientific autonomy. Etymologically the word "Accounting" indicates the set of accounts and registration methods to "keep accounts" of a public or private administration. The State Accounting has a broader content than the name suggests. It has been considered as a "technical discipline", as an "economic discipline" and as a "legal discipline". Despite the controversy that exists in the doctrine, the national doctrine places Public Accounting in the economic discipline. I understand that it is an economic-social and environmental discipline.
Classification
In order to delimit the proper object of the subject, we speak of a division of it into three branches, listed in the order of performance of the operations, which includes:
Preventive (static): Analyzes the preparation and fixation (or approval) of the budget by the competent bodies and foresees for a given period, the financial management to be followed by the revenue collection entities and authorizing authorities. Fixing means passing (the legislature does). It deals with the preventive and limitative valuation, expressed in monetary units, of the expenses in charge of the treasury, which will be destined to satisfy the needs of the State or of the community during a given period or year, and the estimated calculation of resources or Treasury revenue to be financed by expenditures
It means dumping the figures of the recently approved budget in the specific accounts or items, according to the amount authorized in the budget. Preventive accounting is exclusively related to the budget without having used it yet.
This first aspect of public accounting deals with the formulation of the plan of expenses and income of the financial branches of the state, technical questions regarding the projection and approval of the budget, its formal presentation or structure, its validity or duration and to the rules that must be respected during its preparation.
Its basic unit is the budget not executed. It is characterized by being static.
Executive (dynamic ): Follows up the operations and takes care of their convenient accounting registration, both in financial and equity aspects.
Financial Executive Accounting: Registers all the movements related to the budget execution and its stages. It is the subject of Budget Accounting and Fund and Securities Accounting. It will reveal the income and expenses that occur, and the way in which they were received: in values or in cash. It deals with the mechanism of the realization of expenses and resources, that is, the implementation of the budget.
Patrimonial Executive Accounting: Registers from the beginning and until the closing of the fiscal year, the existence of assets of the patrimony, the registrations that the State obtains (purchases and donations) and the deletions of the same (obsolescence, sale or destruction). In other words, it registers the variations in assets. It is reflected at the beginning with an initial patrimony (sum in values of all the assets that the public sector owns at that moment) and at the closing the patrimony is exposed at the closing (patrimony at the beginning - losses or sales). It is aimed at carrying out all acts of conservation or use, legal or economic, of assets subject to state possession.
Criticism : It formulates the theory of control of the financial-patrimonial management of public entities and provides the means for its practical application. The purpose of this branch, therefore, is the control of executive management operations, and everything related to the way of ensuring and enforcing the responsibility of the agents in charge of the administration, custody or conservation of State or State assets. treasure, whatever the nature of such assets.
By comparing the provisions formulated and the legal norms of economic procedure with the concrete reality of the management of the State treasury, it determines the adjustment of the facts to the norms and exercises, through competent bodies, a control of legality and merit of executive management.
It tends to detect all those deviations that occur within the scope of the public sector; and takes the necessary precautions so that in the future there will be no further differences between what is planned and what has been done. It is important to sanction agents and officials either administratively, criminally or politically so that deviations do not recur or occur on a smaller scale.
Purposes of this stage:
Avoid deviations of the public agents in charge of the Financial-Patrimonial Administration (preventive control objective).
Discover the errors and transgressions that have been incurred.
Advise changes of course.
The Legislative Power is the organ of maximum control.
Evolution of Public Accounting
Considering the prince as the supreme authority in the societies before the modern era, the patrimony was understood to belong, in exclusive property, to whoever held political power, and therefore, the prince made the expenses at his discretion and freely disposed of the assets of the community, who were confused with their own. Therefore, any development of coercive financial rules, aimed at facilitating the management of public goods, was hampered by the prevalence and practice of absolutist theories of power.
There could be no public budget in the current sense, as there were no spending limits to which the sovereign should submit. The contributions of the subjects were also determined by the prince's sole will and were adapted to the changing demands mainly planned by warlike conflicts with other political communities. The few control rules that could be adopted in antiquity were only for the interest of the monarch, to ensure the loyalty of its administrators.
The raison d'être of Public Accounting: the interest of the people, placed above the interests of the political authority, was absent in the old institutions. Hence Public Accounting has flourished with the democratic norms of political organization of society; Its most representative institutions arose on the occasion of the English revolution of 1688 and with the concretion of the budget, as a fundamental institution destined to serve as an instrument for financial control exercised by the people through their representatives over the leaders.
The evolution of Public Accounting is closely correlated with that of democracy, especially with the representative or indirect democracy regime. Only through political forms of authentic representativeness, that is, when power is exercised in the name of the people, in whom sovereignty resides, all aspects of Public Accounting find full expression: if the government acts on behalf of the people and, ultimately instance to this belongs the state patrimony. It is before the people that the officials, in charge of the common financial-patrimonial activity, must render an account of their management.
If he is not attended, various measures may be applied, such as the ex officio formation of the delayed account at the expense of the defaulter, the imposition of periodic penalties or the proposal to whom it may concern for the suspension, dismissal, cessation or separation of the service of the account holder. In addition, in their case, they will pass the blame to the State Attorney General for the crime of disobedience.
Despite the obligation to render accounts, there are still numerous public administrations that do not render accounts to the bodies in charge of doing so, that is, to the accounts, state or regional courts.
In Spain, in some communities, pe: barely exceed 50 or 60%, the municipalities that are duly accountable to the external audit bodies, either the Court of Accounts or the corresponding autonomous body. Or what is the same, there are still numerous public administrations that are not accountable to anyone, a serious breach that should not be overlooked by the public powers.
The Social Responsibility of Governments and Administrators.
Corporate social responsibility has been the subject of extensive terminological debate and the controversy of its imperative or voluntary rank remains latent. Until now, the studies and their majority application have been carried out in the private sector. But from a comprehensive foundation (legal-ethical-socioeconomic) and taking into account the comparative context, it is proposed to approach public corporate responsibility with an approach of shared public-private accountability, which serves as a "means" for its potential innovative and standardized application, in particularly by the local public sector, thus contributing to the “glocal” extension of responsible management committed to the “end” of global sustainable development.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the concept of corporate responsibility has already experienced extensive controversy and theoretical debate on the need to articulate a generally accepted definition of what is understood by corporate responsibility, addressing different terminological variants such as corporate social responsibility (CSR), and that in some cases they even induce its limitation to the business environment (CSR), and in others to its translation in the redefinition of concepts as classic as that of the common good or as contemporary as that of sustainability or global sustainable development (economic -social-environmental).
Two of the essential terms that we are going to study are Responsibility-Sustainability; they appear as spark and ashes, first cause and outcome. The term corporate responsibility ultimately means the foundation of our behavior as an organization, the set of values and principles that motivate our actions. Sustainability represents the ultimate objective or goal of such behavior, the deliberate transformation of reality. Sustainable is the adjective of a process "that can maintain itself" obviously with a far greater significance than that of a mere semantic approach.
In the social reality in which corporate responsibility unfolds, until now theoretical studies and research and even its voluntary, progressive application have predominated and systematically expose the elements of CSR and argue about the value of the appropriate use of the terms, to avoid unnecessary confusion. Corporate social responsibility and corporate or corporate social responsibility are synonyms that can be used interchangeably. We tend to “corporate responsibility” because it is more appropriate to speak of “responsibility” in general terms, since it denotes a broader responsibility than that delimited by the term “social”, implying other types of responsibilities, related to other aspects such as example, the financiers,legal or of any other nature. We also prefer the simple allusion to "corporate" rather than "corporate" since it can also serve all kinds of organizations other than companies; specifically, also to the public sector.
It must be assumed that currently the term sustainability is not recognized by the Royal Spanish Academy of Language. In the English language sustainability is also the noun of sustainable, whose definition is practically identical to the Spanish one. Sustainability can be understood, today, according to two levels of amplitude. On the one hand, it can refer to the ability of a process to use natural resources and energy without damaging the environment. A looser way of understanding sustainability derives from the concept of sustainable development according to its three basic pillars: economic, social and environmental. In this perspective, sustainability would be the quality of what can be developed, attending to the needs of the present, without compromising the needs of future generations.In this way, sustainability from the strictly ecological sphere is detached, generalizing in the same way that occurred with the term responsibility. It is majority by private sector organizations and even non-profit entities, having extended much less to the public sector sphere. In Spain, since the last decade of the 20th century, a number of companies have shown their commitment to responsibility by publishing reports on the social or environmental impact of their activity, recognizing “sustainable development as an end to be achieved through the proper implementation of a socially responsible business model ”.It is majority owned by private sector organizations and even non-profit entities, having extended much less to the public sector. In Spain, since the last decade of the 20th century, a number of companies have shown their commitment to responsibility by publishing reports on the social or environmental impact of their activity, recognizing “sustainable development as an end to be achieved through the proper implementation of a socially responsible business model ”.It is majority owned by private sector organizations and even non-profit entities, having extended much less to the public sector. In Spain, since the last decade of the 20th century, a number of companies have shown their commitment to responsibility by publishing reports on the social or environmental impact of their activity, recognizing “sustainable development as an end to be achieved through the proper implementation of a socially responsible business model ”.recognizing "sustainable development as an end to be achieved through the proper implementation of a socially responsible business model".recognizing "sustainable development as an end to be achieved through the proper implementation of a socially responsible business model".
Also the foundation of corporate responsibility has been pointing to the controversy of whether it should be raised to the imperative and mandatory rank. But it is enough to remember the original concept of sustainable development - defined in 1987 - to recognize that it permanently conditions both private and public people, insofar as their activities must "satisfy the needs of the present without jeopardizing the ability of future generations to satisfy their own. " The legitimate demand of society that the public sector carry out responsible management requires that its actions be respectful and even "exemplary" both in the spirit and letter of the law, customs and social and ethical principles and values, as with the socio-environment
economic and environmental and cultural and political heritage. For this reason, the analysis of the concept of corporate social responsibility and sustainability necessarily arises from various sources: from Law, Sociology or Politics, to Philosophy and Ethics, not limited only to the Economy, Accounting or Administration.
The legal and ethical foundations of public sector responsibility. The justification of corporate responsibility and sustainability can be said to be on the table of global discussion. Furthermore, in contrast to the debates on the concept of corporate social responsibility, the responsibility of public powers has followed a changing historical evolution, which is linked to the classic and modern conception of the exercise of power and its responsibility before the social body.
For traditional thought, the society of men is, above all, in its radicality, a "community" that recognizes religious and natural origins, that has internal emotional and attitude ties. It is, therefore, a "society of duties" in which there is a common acceptance of divine rights that determines radical duties in man and society. The government reveals to us the nature of power as a phenomenon that derives from the naturalness of society itself - an idea that is the heritage of Western political philosophy and that, following Aristotle, Saint Thomas Aquinas incorporated into Christian speculation.
However, for enlightened thought, society is rather a coexistence that recognizes simply conventional or agreed origins, that has only voluntary-rational ties. It is a pure "rights society", which arises from a contract or social pact in which the political obligation always follows a personal right and is defined by reason of the respect due to that previous right.
According to García de Enterría, it is in the primitive constitutionalism, both the original English, as well as the American and the French, where the concept of "responsibility" is repeatedly found with the meaning of a responsibility of those who exercise power (leaders) before its owner or principal (the people).
The first text where the concept appears is the Virginia Bill of Rights, June 1776, art. 2nd, and is found in art. 15 of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, an essential document, the text of which is unequivocal: "La Société a le droit de demander compte à tout agent public de son administration" (society has the right
The current relevance of the idea of responsibility of public powers represents both a modernization of the primitive liberal concepts and a reaction against totalitarians. Contemporary states in our environment are "social and democratic states of law" (art. 1.1 of our current Spanish Constitution of 1978).
But in many cases, public leaders and administrators end up trying to evade control or accountability to those they represent, as González Pérez acknowledges: “fleeing from Administrative Law, to act in the field of private law with the same freedom as any entrepreneur who does not manage public funds; or when it is not possible to escape from the administrative order, reducing formalities and controls as much as possible ”.
Hence, a general question prior to the study of corporate responsibility in the public sector is to define what is meant by the public sector? Without going into the depth that would require addressing this issue, as Egea Ibáñez (2009) has done, the public sector has some differential characteristics with respect to the private sector: The most general is the application of the principle of authority to meet collective needs as a Public Law, mainly the Administrative Law.
In this highly contemporary setting, for Thomas Molnar “the public thing is no longer a thing, nor a reality: it is fragmented theoretically and practically, in as many opinions as spirits, the State having become a colossus of clay feet ” Today, the existing political space between the individual and the State shrinks due to the weakening of public institutions and the normative atomization that also seems to be polarized almost to infinity without actually fulfilling its social purpose. However, even though it is difficult for the power to respect the Law, it is less so when the conviction that the law is subject even to moral values and principles superior to the State itself and to governments, operates in society, and should not only demand its effective compliance,but also the democratic game of all kinds of public responsibilities, whatever their manifestation or deployments: supranational, national, territorial, institutional or corporate.
Many of us believe that corruption is but one of the manifestations of the degradation of moral values in a democratic society of law. Gregorio Robles insists on this when he affirms that “the ideological cause of the crisis of values lies in the extension of moral relativism and the utilitarian conception of happiness, the parallel psychological cause to the previous one, is the loss of the sense of duty and consequent strengthening of the sense of rights ”.
Precisely, as many moral values have disappeared or have been transformed in our society, there is a pressing need to reinvent them and even raise them to the level of Codes of conduct by the rulers, who have come to give them legal status and sanction their infractions at the administrative and criminal, typifying up to "fouls". This trend for "political ethics" and "neo-coding" has already spread in the public sector.
In any case, the responsibility of governments and public administrations demands more than a reactive or “ex-post” analysis in legal or ethical terms, through a prosecution or control of non-compliances and successive sanctions in accordance with Law or a "Neo-encoded" morality. There are other, more "pro-active" dimensions of the "ex-ante" social responsibility of the public sector in its contribution to the effectiveness of values and principles such as that of government and the administration of sustainable development, which, as Rodríguez de Santiago affirms " it rests on the idea of distributive justice in three senses; the international balance between industrialized and developing countries, intergenerational solidarity and also a balance between members of the same society ”.
The socioeconomic analysis of corporate responsibility applied to the public sector.
During the eighties, and as a consequence of the crisis of the seventies of the twentieth century, the State ceased to think of itself as the sole social administrator and began to defend the idea that the contribution to well-being and quality of life should be the goal of all social institutions, not just a monopoly of the public sector. Thus, in the 20th century, a driving force for CSR emerged in the mid-90s in the hands of international organizations and multisectoral groups that have promoted the development of standards, codes of conduct, guidelines, norms and instruments to facilitate corporate social responsibility (CSR).
All in all, Smith's ideas about the role of the public sector in general take full effect in terms of corporate responsibility, somehow they are still alive, as Sánchez Huete points out: “social responsibility is not, it should not be, a mechanism for the empowerment of certain economic sectors, since they lack the democratic legitimacy and representativeness that is needed to show the interests of the entire society ”.
Today more and more companies and institutions want to fully assume their corporate responsibility (more honest practices, transparency in management, respect for the environment, human rights, etc.) and different approaches have been developed. According to Garriga and Mele (2004) in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR), up to four groups of approaches can be differentiated:
1.Those who understand social responsibility from an instrumental perspective. That is, they are committed to ethical and responsible behavior to the extent that such behavior provides competitive advantages.
2. Those theories that focus on the power of corporations in society and the responsible use of this power in politics.
3.The integrative theories, which focus on the social demands of its stakeholders.
4.The theories on the ethical responsibility of organizations towards society.
However, companies, civil society and governments and public administrations, while pursuing their own objectives, and even assuming different approaches to corporate responsibility, contribute to the transformation of society as a whole.
This implies adopting a fifth approach that we could call “polyhedral”, as is today's society itself with a new shared awareness of the interrelation that exists between legitimation-trust / loyalty-credibility in the different “multipurpose roles or profiles” of the public and private sector at corporate responsibility level:
All the socio-economic approaches to corporate responsibility (which until now have been mostly applied in the private sector) are susceptible of "analogical application" to the public sector, and can in turn be analyzed in a triple trajectory: a) From the "prisoner's dilemma" ”To“ competitive advantage ”: Some well-known economists, such as M. Friedman, only recognize one social responsibility of the company: the increase in profits. They argue that in a free economy, the company's social responsibility consists exclusively of using resources (including people) and carrying out activities aimed at increasing profits, without violating laws or customs.
The social effects generated would come given by the fulfillment of the law, the payment of taxes and their contribution to employment. Friedman starts from considering that if all market agents are guided by principles of economic rationality, then, an optimal and efficient result will be achieved, so that no economic agent can increase its utility without diminishing that of any other. But real-life dilemmas arise from the various ways in which our individual interests conflict with those of others and those of society at large.
If companies are "prisoners" of rational profit, as if they were isolated prisoners, mutual mistrust can lead to each acting on their own. In this way they reach the worst possible situation, not achieving their objective, nor guaranteeing their survival.
Similarly, governments and public administrations can sit and wait as in the "prisoner's dilemma" for another to start. One way to move forward may be to actively seek out what corporate responsibility can mean of “competitive advantage” for the private and public sector: once progress has been made in this direction, progress can be made in other more complex and global aspects. According to Joseph M. Lozano “what it is about is to recover the etymological sense of competitiveness (cum petere> pursue together), because, more than the fight between rivals in search of mutual elimination, it is about seeking ways together of exit to the problems that press us, from the specificity of each actor ”.
From the "global crisis" to "global responsibility":
Globalization plays ambiguously: on the one hand it accentuates competition and on the other hand it distances those who are responsible for those who suffer its consequences. According to Miralles, sociologists have come to define the characteristics of the contemporary global society: informational and knowledge society, of innovation, multicultural, risky, uneven and complex. In some way, today's society lives in a continuous global crisis of norms, values and principles, of models and forms of coexistence and of social and economic interrelation.
Globalization also affects the public sector, which sees the boundaries of sovereignty and geographic and territorial competition blur. In global society it is useless to look for a single regulator. For A. D ́Ors: “the idea of undifferentiated continuity that globalization inspires prevents the radical and coherent unity of a common order. For it to exist, formal recognition of discontinuity is required; both the horizontal, between the different members and parts that make up the set, and the vertical, between the different levels of decision ”.
In global society not only do hierarchies or spatial and temporal references change, interrelationships also multiply and expand in a process of global governance in which the joint action of all those involved in social transformation, from bottom to top, From left to right, it leads us to ask ourselves differently about who should answer, to what, and to whom. So that globalization does not lead us to a diluted version of responsibility, but to a responsibility that is not ignored by the global perspective. In a world experiencing a globalized crisis, Joseph M. Lozano suggests to us “an emphasis on responsibility and a concern for what we could continue to call the common good, with the only addition that the common in an interdependent world has a dimension to the global and local time and,therefore it requires an approach that has been described with glocal neologism ”.
From "global responsibility" to "shared accountability": Many governments and public administrations are aware that multiple factors play a role in their "global" sphere of action and society forces them to be "jointly responsible". This means greater complexity in the relationships of the actors and hence the need to also define their “accountability”. Direct translation of accountability is responsibility.
To be accountable means having to be held accountable for what is done. Theoretically, the accountability and disclosure of information on corporate responsibility is due to a defendant from society -theory of legitimacy- or from interest groups -stakeholders-. In relation to the stakeholder theory proposed by Freeman: "A stakeholder of a company is any group that can affect or be affected by the actions carried out by the company in achieving its objectives." Two aspects are different, the normative or ethical, and the positive or management.
The first establishes prescribers on the relationship with interest groups. The second emphasizes relational management of stakeholders, with whom they control resources. Although both theories are two sides of the same coin.
In practice, “accountability” has become a crucial factor for survival and legitimation as a consequence of the growing demand for information, mainly, the increase in power, and therefore responsibility of the public and private sectors.. Accountability does not only require reporting on what is happening, but also inquiring about the importance and priority of everything that happens. Deciding what should be quantified and what should be evaluated is not easy, especially in a competitive world with shared responsibilities in immediate and global environments. In fact, a global network with the same name Accountability has even appeared to promote private and public innovations in accountability in order to foster global sustainable development.
In a democratic and social state of law, “accountability” applied to the public sector is not only a “normative” issue, but also a social or “participatory” one. Accountability ”is a means for internal and external management and control, but also a process open to dialogue and trust-building in a triangular framework of reciprocal (synalagmatic) relations and spheres of responsibility and accountability between State-Companies-Society.
Accountability only makes full sense if public and private actors share approaches and experiences from the local to the global (“glocal”) level. “Glocal responsibility” requires a “shared accountability”, which implies, by definition: inclusiveness, relevance and response capacity. Public and private organizations are inclusive if they commit to being responsible and identifying those relevant issues with the greatest impact on society and its stakeholders, engaging in finding coherent solutions to their expectations and needs, accounting for their results internally and external, thus reinforcing both its legitimacy and credibility, and the degree of trust and response of society in general, and of interest groups in particular.
To achieve that the public sector assumes a “shared accountability”, Mónica Melle suggests taking a progressive path: “on the basis of a fully citizen Administration, it is likely that a maturation procedure will be required in practice through different stages, in which to incorporate the principles of social responsibility in their management (complete transparency, accountability, environmental sustainability, stakeholder dialogue, alliance with multiple interest groups) ”.
Public Corporate Responsibility (RCP): Innovative approaches.
It is worth noting a certain degree of convergence on the part of some governments and public administrations in general; and particularly at the local level, on the opportunity to manage public resources, applying management techniques and instruments. It should be considered that in the technification and professionalization of the management of public resources, great efforts have been made, including adopting "innovative" approaches in the local public sector: The Balanced Scorecard (IMC) has already been an adequate and applied tool for years in the local public sector in Spain (for example, in the Sant Cugat del Vallès City Council) to develop the incorporation of financial and non-financial measures into the conventional information and control systems of the local public sector.
WE SHOULD ADD NEW AREAS, such as:
I dentification and Measurement - Identification and Measurement - New Guidelines for Intangibles - Socio-Environmental - Inflationary Economies
Conclusions
The decision made by countries to follow the path towards the implementation of IFRS as well as the adoption process by companies and other entities in the private and public spheres has had different consequences. The impact on the samples carried out and analyzed, has to do with core accounting elements (Fixed assets, inventories, Biological assets, Intangible assets, Sales revenue, Cost of sales, Socio-Environment, Inflation Adjustments, etc.).
I consider it necessary to highlight the importance of evaluating the impacts of the adoption of IFRS and insist on the need to incorporate a topic of global relevance within the training of accounting professionals. We must always remember that accounting regulation, beyond being a political process, requires a doctrinal base and the deepening of research in Accounting allows positively influencing regulatory development, giving greater credibility to the discipline.
The Government, as the entity responsible for the economic and social development of a country, is, on the one hand, faced with the existence of numerous budgetary restrictions and, on the other, with some taxpayers who demand more benefits every day to satisfy their needs. In this context, it is essential to manage, in the best possible way, the large amounts of funds that are necessary to meet the expectations of citizens, that is, the rationalization and optimization of the use of the scarce resources available becomes evident.
Of course, for an adequate administration of the available resources, information that is reliable is required, in order to know and analyze the actions that must be taken to achieve certain objectives. Therefore, government management unquestionably requires adequate economic-financial information for the decision-making process. So much so that, when the information system is not adequate, government efficiency is considerably reduced, which could increase the possibility of corruption, leading to a decrease in the probability of growth and economic development in the country.
Thus, in recent years, many Latin American countries have carried out important reforms in their public accounting information systems, with the intention of improving the provision of information for decision-making. Although the changes that are taking place in public accounting systems are generally oriented in the same direction, cumulative accounting continues to produce diversity in public accounting practices.
However, this situation could change since, for the first time, an international organization, such as IFAC, issues an official series of standards for the preparation of financial reports from public entities that, in the event of being adopted, and despite from the criticisms received (Jones, 2000), could contribute to the harmonization of accounting practices of the governments of the different countries.
International accounting harmonization is important as it aims to mitigate the problems of communication, understanding and analysis of accounting information at the international level., the achievement of equivalent and comparable financial information is only achieved through an adequate level of harmonization. Therefore, in practical terms, this could be conceived as the process of increasing the comparability of accounting practices, establishing limits to their degree of variation. Thus, the concept of international public accounting harmonization would carry with it the objective of “reducing the differences” between the accounting systems used by the public sector in different countries. Although own features may make some differences.
While globalization of markets is probably the main reason to defend the international harmonization of accounting practices in the corporate sphere, in the public sector it finds a better justification in regional globalization, that is, in the formation of integrated economic markets. Governments must harmonize their information in order to provide a complete picture of the financial situation of the common economic framework and, thus, facilitate economic decision-making that affects it.
In this sense, since the last decade, an increase in interdependence and globalization of markets has been taking place in Latin America, as in the rest of the world, highlighting, among others, the economic regionalization achieved in the Andean countries, through the subregional integration agreement of an intergovernmental nature called the Andean Community of Nations (CAN), signed by the leaders of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, whose antecedents date back to 1969, the date on which the Agreement of Cartagena -also known as the Andean Pact-, and which began operating in August 1997. The same is the Mercosur made up of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay…
The importance of these subregional organizations lies in their important commitments, creating the conditions for the free mobility of services, capital and people in the subregion to be added to the free movement of goods.
Applying to CAN the arguments put forward by Lüder (1988), for the European case, we find the following reasons for a regional public accounting harmonization of the countries that comprise it:
-Need to compare the financial information and the changes in the position of the member countries regarding this.
-Need to consolidate the financial statements of the member countries, to have an overview of the financial situation of the Community or Common Market.
-Need to consider the same treatment for concessions and debits in the member countries, so that, later, this information is used in the national accounts.
Now, when it is the case that the countries that make up this regional organization are developing nations that need international financing, the following reasons must be added (Points, 2000):
- The need for financial information required by international donors, such as the Asian Bank, the IDB, the World Bank, the USAID, the Ausaid or the IMF. This will allow the latter to analyze the public financial information presented to them more easily, since all the countries in need of funds use the same public accounting standards.
As Points (2000) points out, this harmonization would have the advantage of having greater mobility for the profession, since in this way people become familiar with international accounting standards for the public sector, so they will be able to move within their own country and even between one government and another.
However, neither the existence of agreements for the establishment of common areas of commerce nor the pressure of international financing organizations have necessarily led to a homogeneity of the public accounting systems of the central entities of the countries, in the case of those that make up Mercosur. (Caba and López, 2003) or the European Union (Vela and Fuertes, 2000). This, because the public accounting system of each country is made based on the intended objectives and the order given to them.
Thus, in the work that has been carried out on the above areas, the existence of four large groups of public accounting systems in which the different countries are normally located is observed:
- Accounting systems mainly oriented towards improving control. They propose detailed and rigid control of government expenditures and revenues as their main competence, that is, they reinforce traditional budget accounting.
- Accounting systems oriented towards the need to improve transparency. They consider it essential to provide more understandable and reliable information, for which it improves the instruments of external information, through the introduction of wealth information.
- Accounting systems oriented towards the need to improve public management. They focus mainly on the need to do more, with fewer resources, that is, to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of public management, focusing on internal management instruments, so the emphasis is on management accounting.
- Accounting systems aimed at both improving transparency and public management. Both orientations are appreciated, that is, both the external orientation of financial accounting and the internal orientation of management accounting.
But above all this, Public Accounting definitively insert the Accrual Criterion and emphasize more stringent rules and applications of Accountability.
Having seen the impetus that the existence of a regional organization made up of developing countries - the case of the CAN or Mercosur countries - can give to the harmonization of public accounting information systems, it would be worth considering what standard to implement to achieve that harmonization.
When the standard to be applied is raised, the barrier of nationalism appears, which can make each country consider that its public accounting system is the most appropriate, being difficult to adopt standards that come from another country in the region. However, if these standards do not come from any of them, but are issued by an international organization, in which practically all countries participate, there should not be, in principle, the logical rejection that occurs when a country tries to impose their model on the rest, thus emerging nationalisms.
In other words, the absence of international accounting standards for the public sector has been the dominant note. However, efforts have been intensified to make the picture different. In fact, IFAC, through its Committee for the Public Sector (CSP), is urging the adoption of international public accounting standards, making it one of the main bodies that, until now, has focused its interest in this field. This committee has issued twenty-one international public sector accounting standards, which have taken as a starting point the international private accounting standards (IAS), issued by the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC), under the premise that the basic principles are the same in the public and private sectors. This equivalence between IAS and IPSAS,detailed in Table 1, demonstrates that at the international level it is intended that private sector accounting become the dominant doctrine in the public accounting field, perhaps it is the best. No?.Maybe with some improvements and reforms.
Therefore, the existence for the first time of this official series of norms on the preparation of reports in this sector, which can avoid the obstacle of nationalism, makes us wonder what would be the changes that should be made in the public financial information of countries, in view of the possible introduction of these International Public Sector Accounting Standards, specifically, IPSAS Nos. 1 and 2.
Regarding the reform of the financial administration and the public accounting system, there are many Latin American countries that receive financial and technical support from different organizations, international or national, instrumentalized through various programs that seek to collaborate in economic development. thereof. If we have the need to evaluate these programs, one of the requirements that these international organizations put in when financing certain government projects is to be accurately and timely accountable, establishing minimum standards for the accounting system. and audit that the borrowing countries must establish (Arnord, 2001; Asselin, 2001).
Although most Latin American countries have made continuous efforts to improve their financial management systems, until the last decade, acceptable results have not been obtained (Correa, 1996).
Undoubtedly, governments have become aware of the importance of having an adequate information system to ensure development effectiveness (World Bank, 1994), with which the modernization project of financial administration becomes a central element for dialogue between international organizations and Latin American governments, to the point that, in the framework of financial cooperation, these modernization programs have been financed, giving priority to the public sector over other sectors such as the environment, health or education.
In the framework of technical cooperation, in 1989, and at the initiative of the Agency for International Development (AID, for its acronym in English), a financial management model emerged for the member countries of the Latin American and Caribbean Region (LAC) called Integrated System: Financial Administration Model for Latin America and the Caribbean (SIMAFAL). This initiative has been financed by the World Bank, by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and / or by the Inter-American Development Bank, and, of course, by the country where the reform is carried out.
The existence of a financial aid program, together with a methodological and operational framework in which a model of government financial administration is defined, has led to the majority of Latin American countries having faced a situation of partial or comprehensive reform of your financial management system. This includes changes in its budget laws, in its accounting and auditing systems, and in the computerized use of financial information, with the aim of giving greater transparency to the reception, application, and control of public resources.
In fact, the reform carried out has been, in most cases, led by a single coordinating body for the entire public financial administration system, which has allowed its operations to be more efficient in all aspects. Notwithstanding the IFAC standards that could be applied globally with local dyes and improvements to come, I think they would be the best option.
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