Susana Jorge

Sónia P. Nogueira

Nuno Ribeiro

Accounting Innovations, Implementation Strategy, Institutional Theory, Institutional Logics.

This paper aims at understanding the action of pilot entities, in order to ultimately infer about their role to the overall reform process of public sector accounting (PSA). Taking the Portuguese case as a reference, the new institutional theory (isomorphism perspective) and institutional logics are used to explain the action and stance of pilot entities in the implementation process of reforms.Pilot experiments are expected to provide feedback on the main difficulties felt in the implementation of a new PSA system, helping to define a global strategy to overcome those problems and to improve the system to be generally and finally put into practice. Nevertheless, entities seem to find it important to be pilots, more for individual advantages than for the common benefit of the reform as a whole. Therefore, in order for them to actually be important actors in the reform process, pilots need to be included in the decision process, better realizing the benefits of the new IPSAS-based system and be provided with the proper technical, human and financial support.