Analysis of Public Sector Accounting Researches in Iran and Future Researches Directions

The main purpose of this study is to identify the share of public sector accounting in Accounting papers as well as its research areas. In addition, this study seeks to present more clear directions about the research opportunities of public sector accounting based on Iran’s situation. In this study, research based journals are reviewed from 1992 to 2014. They are analyzed and categorized based on archival research method and thematic analysis. The study shows that only 3% of 21 investigated journal's articles involve papers of public sector accounting. Meanwhile, Audit Knowledge and Health Accounting are the leading journals. The domain of most researches includes government, universities and municipalities. More than 60% of studies have used survey method. Additionally, this study analyzed the subjects by applying thematic analysis and typology approach. Topics such as accrual accounting and budgeting have been focused. At last, the results of interview with public sector accounting experts identified that financial accounting, financial reporting, management accounting, budgeting, financial and performance auditing, accountability, and financial management are of the most important issues for the future researches .