Revisiting Public Sector Accountability: Integrating the Cultural Philosophy of Toddopuli Temmalara into Local Government Governance

Abstract

Purpose: This study revisits public sector accountability through the Bugis–Luwu cultural philosophy of Toddopuli Temmalara, understood as the “courage to fight for truth,” by examining how its four values—adele, lempu, tongeng, and getteng—are enacted in everyday local government accounting practice.

Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative interpretive case study was conducted in the Luwu Raya region of South Sulawesi, employing semi‑structured in‑depth interviews, participatory observation in public budget accountability deliberation forums, and document analysis of local government financial and performance reports, analysed using inductive thematic coding.

Findings: Findings indicate that the four Toddopuli Temmalara values operate as an integrated moral framework oriented toward accountability as collective honor (siri'‑based accountability), rather than as isolated virtues. Adele is realized through needs‑based deliberative allocation, lempu and tongeng jointly underpin information integrity, and getteng acts as a moral bulwark against informal political pressure, revealing the limits of formal compliance alone.

Practical implications: The results suggest that embedding Toddopuli Temmalara into civil‑service codes of ethics, leadership development programs, and the design of public budget accountability forums could strengthen the cultural foundations of substantive accountability and enhance the effectiveness of formal systems such as SAKIP.

Originality/value: This paper is among the first to systematically position Toddopuli Temmalara as an indigenous accounting framework, conceptually comparable to karma phala in Bali and Indigenous Australian cultural accountability, while extending stewardship and ethnomethodological perspectives with a Bugis–Luwu lens that remains underexplored in international public sector accounting literature.

Paper type: Empirical