Converging New Public Management Reforms and Diverging Accounting Practices in Flemish Local Governments

This paper aims at presenting a comparative study of the diverging development of accounting reforms in Flemish local governments in terms of accounting from a technical point of view. On the one hand, the objectives and the framework of current governmental accounting reforms aiming at improving New Public Management are currently converging. On the other hand, a conceptual examination reveals that the prescribed accounting practices are widely diverging and apparently this is also the case for the practical implementation of the reformed accounting systems. By way of conclusion, a number of possible reasons for this unsuccessful proliferation are presented.