11. Concluding Remarks
The IASB and FASB's attempt to revise their conceptual frameworks to come up with an improved CF was a great opportunity to surmount the limitations of their individual frameworks. However, in January 2014 it was decided that IASB/FASB CF would no longer be a joint project but that each board would work on their conceptual framework independently. We have reviewed Phase A of the revised CF project identifying the key concerns raised in the discussion paper and Exposure draft of the IASB CF and analysing to what extent the concerns raised by the stakeholders have been taken into consideration in the revised CF. From the analysis of the actions taken by the IASB in response to the opinions of the advocates of the CF, it can be ascertained that the boards acknowledged the concerns of the public to only a limited extent. This reaction of IASB shows that it has again misidentified the problems in its 1989 framework, because there are notions within the CF, such as reliability, that have not been solved and have now been replaced with faithful representation, which will have no positive impact on the preparers and auditors of financial reports. Additionally, the analysis shows that IASB is de-emphasizing important financial reporting objectives that existed in the previous framework. For example, the analysis clearly shows that stewardship has always been an important part of the objective of financial reporting, and the downgraded focus on stewardship clearly explains the strong adverse reactions by commentators on CF. Reflection on the efforts by the boards to de-emphasize the formal role of stewardship suggests that this would have undesirable consequences for users of accounting information because users would be far removed from many of the actions of management, which would have an impact on the opinions they hold on entities.
