Abstract

This study, based on a survey of accounting practitioners in public corporations and quasigovernmental organizations, examines the effectiveness of the K－IFRS adoption in the public sector between 2011 and 2013 and highlights areas for further development. The primary objective of the study is to identify whether the adoption of K－IFRS has resulted in the improvement of accounting quality provided by those organizations. A survey was sent to 110 practitioners working directly/indirectly in accounting, finance, and budgeting in public institutions from 19 August 2016 to 21 September 2016. The findings show that practitioners have more positive views about K－IFRS after its implementation, and there are improvements in the usefulness of financial information, accounting transparency, and comparability across organizations. Some of the problems in applying K－IFRS in public organizations include lack of personnel with appropriate accounting expertise, insufficient preparation time, heavy workloads, complex accounting procedures, and increased disclosures. Additional measures are required to address these issues. In particular, institutional measures should be taken to build specific accounting standards for different entity types and allow selective implementation of K－IFRS for small organizations. From an operational perspective, it is necessary to increase the number of accounting experts, expand and strengthen professional education and training on K－IFRS, and undertake various efforts to improve and reconstruct the accounting system. This paper contributes to the literature by extending the subject of research to public organizations and focusing on the views of the very practitioners of accounting on the adoption of K－IFRS. Existing studies have collected data on public organizations but only on a limited scale and have drawn conclusions on the indirect measurements of stock price reactions to the variation in quality of financial information. This study is able to focus more directly on the changes in information quality following the K－IFRS adoption because it draws on data from an exhaustive survey, which is conducted after years of transition period, and extends the analysis by subdividing the sample into public corporations and quasi－governmental organizations, accounting and non－accounting departments, and middle managers and low－level managers. The survey results provide important implications for government officials, who supervise the accounting system of public institutes in the Ministry of Strategy and Finance and who promote the expansion of K－IFRS to local governments, as well as practitioners.

Keywords

• K－IFRS
• Public corporations
• Quasi－governmental organizations
• Qualitative characteristics of accounting information

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