7. Discussion and conclusions
The study has examined the framing of rhetoric surrounding the adoption of accrual accounting in Malaysia. The findings show that rhetorical appeals to accrual accounting were keyed by technical logic of accrual accounting over the modified cash basis, the credibility of accrual accounting in supporting various economic objectives and the emotional appeal for social governance.
Through this study, the paper has contributed to the literature in several ways. First, using Goffman’s frame analysis, the paper has shown how accrual accounting can be used to ‘key’ change with rhetorical appeals to a logic of technical potential for financial management purposes but also with social discourses that had been ‘framed’ in the GTP as part of credibility and emotional rhetorical appeals. The GTP was the transformation of the global interpretive frame that acts as the master frame to the other public sector transformation programmes such as accrual accounting. The findings of this study therefore suggest that the discourses surrounding the implementation of accrual accounting are meshed with the discourses on the GTP, the master frame that shapes the shared understandings of public sector governance. This keying enables the government to demonstrate that the adoption of accrual accounting is not merely a logic of technical potential exercise but a framing of credibility and emotions for social governance and for public accountability.
The findings indicate that the adoption of accrual accounting was rhetorically framed to appeal for good governance and anticorruption of public sector organisations. Drawing on Aristotle’s art of persuasion and Goffman Frame analysis, we noted that the keying of logic of accrual accounting, embedded in its technical characteristics, is primarily located in the Treasury circulars, laws and regulations and implementations strategies outlined by the Accountant General. When technical logic of accrual accounting was set out in widely circulated documents in government such as Treasury Circulars, they act as a source of empowerment to the implementation team in enabling a smoother transition to accrual accounting.
