Policy Transfer, Institutional Isomorphism, and External Auditor Roles in United Nations Accrual Accounting Systems

This paper engages the influence of external auditors on policy creation within 25 UN affiliated IOs. After tracing the UN's gradual adoption of accrual accounting, the authors engage in a content analysis of financial statements at one-year and five-years after accrual accounting implementation. This research not only extends nascent research on IO budgets (Moloney, 2018; Ege, 2017; Patz, 2017) into financial statements and the policy influence of accrual accounting on IO operations but it also engages the policy transfer concept beyond IO-to-state (Evans, 1999; Stone, 2004) or state-to-state arrangements (Marsh, 2009) to external auditor-to-IO. Instead, we find that external auditors of IOs are a component of what Stone and Moloney (2019, 2020) identified as an actor with not only power over the IO and its operations but also global policy power too. The uniqueness of the accrual accounting model and its impact is one explanation for external auditor power. Please note that the second author, Gwenda Jensen, is a former accountant at the UN. She works for a NGO (IPSASB) that has been instrumental in encouraging states and IOs to implement accrual accounting. If accepted, this paper will be presented at ECRP by Kim Moloney (first author). If COVID vaccination occurs in Gwenda's Canada in sufficient time, Gwenda may also attend. The third author, Rayna Stoycheva (University of Miami) will not attend.