the examination of managers’ attitudes toward the quality of financial reports (case study: fars province university of medical sciences)

introduction: the main purpose of accounting and financial reporting systems in the public sector is to provide sophisticated information to help managers play an effective role regarding accountability, and help them make sensible political, economical and social decisions. hence, this research investigates managers’ attitudes toward the quality of financial reports. methods: the current paper belongs to applied-survey research. 128 financial and nonfinancial managers in 105 subset branches of fars province university of medical sciences took part in the study as the participants in 2011. the research data were collected by means of a questionnaire containing 29 propositions. one-sample t-test and qp-test were used for testing the research hypotheses. results: the results of the study indicate that from the perspectives of managers, the presented information in financial reports in fars province university of medical sciences has only comprehensibility and timeliness qualitative characteristics, but it lacks the other quality characteristics such as relevance, honesty, comparability, traceability, predictability and validity. conclusion: given the findings of this paper, it is suggested that appropriate reporting standards be used and financial personnel of fars province university of medical sciences be trained in order to enhance the quality of financial information. key words: public accountability, managers’ attitude, qualitative characteristics, fars province university of medical sciences