دانلود رایگان مقاله افشا گری اجباری محیطی توسط شرکت مطابق با استاندارد حسابداری بین المللی / IFRS

Abstract

This study investigates whether the adoption of a single set of accounting standards, such as IASs/ IFRSs, guarantees the harmonization of accounting practices within a country and across countries, or whether differences in reporting practices persist because of dissimilarities in reporting habits and institutional settings. To this end, we investigate whether the level of environmental disclosure under IFRSs is related to the size of the reporting firm, and the strength of legal and regulatory constraints on environmental disclosures in the country where the firm is domiciled. Results indicate (1) that environmental disclosures imposed by IFRSs increase with firm size, and (2) that firms domiciled in countries with constraining environmental disclosure regulations (i.e., France and the UK) report more on environmental issues than firms domiciled in countries with weakly constraining regulations (i.e., Germany). This suggests a strong impact of national regulations on IFRS reporting. Taken as a whole, our results support the view that IFRSs are not applied consistently across firms and across countries, notably because of persistence of reporting traditions and discrepancies in national legal requirements. © 2014 University of Illinois. All rights reserved.

7. Conclusion

In a context where environmental reporting is a major challenge for accounting practice and research, this study analyzes whether companies complying with IFRSs apply IFRS environmental requirements consistently. The analysis of the international accounting standards and interpretations shows that there is no international standard exclusively dedicated to environmental issues. However, several standards have explicit or implicit provisions related to the recognition, measurement, and reporting of environmental expenses, assets, and liabilities. After a detailed analysis of accounting standards and accounting reporting practices, we proposed a grid of environmental information that should be reported by companies having to comply with IFRSs. We used this grid to analyze the 2007 financial statements of 114 selected German, French, and UK companies and to quantify their mandatory environmental disclosures complying with IASs/IFRSs. The results show that: • Half of the firms do not report any environmental information at all. • Environmentally-sensitive firms exhibit higher overall disclosure scores than do nonsensitive firms, and this difference comes primarily from disclosed monetary information. • Larger firms report more environmental information than do smaller ones. • German firms disclose less environmental monetary information than do British and French ones. This could be explained by the fact that while France and the UK have opted for a regulated framework of environmental information, mostly for listed and large non-listed companies, Germany has provided only disclosure guidelines.