Adoption of the International Public Sector Accounting Standards in emerging economies and low-income countries: A structured literature review

Purpose – The aim of the study is to review the extant literature on International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSASs) adoption in emerging economies (EEs) and low-income countries (LICs) (‘what do we know?’) and to propose an agenda for future research (‘what do we need to know?’). Design/methodology/approach – An analytical framework that builds on diffusion theory (Rogers, 2003) is developed. We follow the ‘PRISMA Flow Diagramme’ (Moher et al., 2009) to reduce a total of 427 articles from four databases to a final sample of 41 articles. These studies are examined, aided by the analytical framework. Findings – We find that IPSASs are a relevant issue for EEs/LICs. Overall, existing research is often explorative. We discover that the majority of articles rely on secondary data collection. While two thirds of studies perform a content analysis of pre-existing material, about one fifth of articles each collect primary data through means of interviews and questionnaires. The findings offer a holistic understanding of where and at what stages IPSASs reforms stand in EEs/LICs and what factors influence the progression of reforms to the next stage of diffusion. Originality/value – We outline a number of avenues for further research after discussing the dominating trends and structuring the literature based on our analytical framework. These stem from looking at the blank spots and an identified need to contextualise IPSASs adoption in EEs/LICs.