SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Business Administration
No 2010:1:
The Need for a Different Approach to Financial Reporting and Standard-setting
Lars Östman ()
Abstract: International Financial Reporting Standards are
questioned. Possibly, there is a need for a different kind of standards and
a different procedure for developing them. No doubt, there is a need for a
more profound theoretical approach to these issues. Theory-building in
accounting should include approaches whereby problem descriptions have a
broad coverage and cross the boarders of traditional specialisations. In
this paper, a theoretical approach is outlined. According to this approach,
insights into control problems for every organisation and system can be
gained by analysing relationships between global value chains and a
hierarchy of one or several organisations. Time is crucial. Instrumentality
is regarded as an inevitable and necessary guide line for any control
system that relates resources to functions and visions. Instrumentality
concerns the effects of tools on certain functions. In the paper financial
reporting and standard-setting are placed in a wide context in which
longitudinal relationships are essential for individuals, organisations and
control systems. Basic financial accounting concepts and their
relationships with business events are discussed. The importance of
uncertainty for financial reporting is emphasized, and so is the fact, that
control from top-levels is exercised at a distance. A tendency to
instrumentalism is also recognized: measures and procedures, for example
standard setting procedures, tend to be important in themselves,
irrespective of ultimate economic functions in a wider perspective. The
analysis in the paper is one application of a general approach to financial
control for all types of organisations. The general approach is based on a
number of previous research-oriented books published over several decades
and the author´s specific own experiences from internal and external
processes with organisations in focus. Consistency and integrative power of
the ideas have been tested in relation to certain books in various fields
outside the core of the subject: applied systems theory, theatre,
sociology, economic history, institutional theory and economics.
Keywords: financial reporting; International Financial Reporting Standards; standard-setting; accounting standard setting bodies; supervisory boards; corporate governance; transparency; market value accounting; mark-to-market; fair values; historical values; accounting theory.; (follow links to similar papers)
29 pages, January 19, 2010
Before downloading any of the electronic versions below
you should read our statement on
copyright.
Download GhostScript
for viewing Postscript files and the
Acrobat Reader for viewing and printing pdf files.
Full text versions of the paper:
hastba2010_001.pdf 
(239kB)
Download Statistics
Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Helena Lundin ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ()
or Helena Lundin ().
Programing by
Design by Joakim Ekebom
