دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی تأثیر فرهنگ بر محافظه کار بودن حسابداری در هنگام تصویب IFRS در اتحادیه اروپا - امرالد 2017

Abstract:

Purpose – This paper examines the impact of culture on accounting conservatism during transition to international standards. Design/methodology/approach – The sample used in this analysis consists of 15 countries of the European Union that have adopted IFRS pursuing Regulation N° 1606/2002. The study covers the 2000-2010 period. Two conservatism measures are used, the Basu (1997) measure to account for conditional conservatism and the accruals measure to account for unconditional conservatism. In order to test the impact of culture, the six dimensions of Hofstede (1980 and 2010) are used. Findings – The results of the analysis show that variation of conditional conservatism is influenced by the six cultural dimensions. However, unconditional conservatism is only affected by power distance. Originality/value – The results of our study are interesting and provide a better understanding of the adoption of IFRS worldwide. The role of culture in explaining accounting practices after adopting a single set of accounting standards is particularly highlighted.

5. Analysis of the results and conclusion

The objective of this study is to examine the impact of culture on accounting conservatism in European companies during a transition to international standards. In fact, little is known about factors influencing accounting choices after IFRS adoption. Fearnley and Gray (2015) found that cultural values are determinant in explaining accounting choices even after IFRS adoption. We investigate this issue on the basis of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. The study examined 15 countries of the European Union that had adopted IFRS in 2005 in accordance with Regulation N°1606/2002. Two conservatism measures have been used to reflect its two forms. The first one is developed by Basu (1997) and measures conditional conservatism. The second estimates discretionary accruals by the modified Jones model and it measures unconditional conservatism.

Regarding conditional conservatism, the results of our study show that culture is a moderating variable of the relationship between IFRS and the level of accounting conservatism. Thus, a decrease in conditional conservatism was more significant for groups with high "uncertainty avoidance", "power distance" and "long-term orientation" scores. It is also more significant for groups with low "individualism", "masculinity" and "indulgence/restraint" scores. This result is consistent with our expectations and prior research. Especially, Borker (2013) predicted a positive relation between conservatism on the one hand and power distance, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation on the other. For unconditional conservatism, there are differences in the impact of culture only for the subgroups formed according to the "power distance" dimension. In fact, the decrease in unconditional conservatism was more significant in cultures with a high level of this dimension. This is in line with our expectations and with the result obtained for conditional conservatism. However, for the other five dimensions, the results show that the impact of IFRS is similar for subgroups with high and low scores of the above mentioned dimensions. Thus, we can conclude that these cultural dimensions have no impact on unconditional conservatism when IFRS are applied. The variation of conservatism may be mainly attributed to the application of the international standards. In this regard, we can refer to André et al. (2015) who stated that “The form of ‘prudence’ that the Board intended to eliminate from the conceptual framework (and financial reporting) can be clearly related to unconditional conservatism”vi. So we can conclude that accounting practices under IFRS lead to a reduction of unconditional conservatism regardless of culture differences. Moreover, the result on unconditional conservatism could be due to the measure employed which, probably, leaves less opportunity to exercise discretion influenced by culture.