International Accounting Standards Harmonization:an Accounting Culture Perspective

Although accounting and culturology belong to different research fields and may have different research objects, it is undeniable that the circumstance of the accounting culture will have some impacts on the accounting as it is one form of human management practice. So accounting itself has some certain cultural backgrounds, and is full of cultural connotation. Therefore, in the study of accounting culturology, the accounting is the core, and the culture is the background. Accounting culturology is both in the study field of culturology and accounting, and they can influence each other simultaneously. Accounting culturology is the blend of the accounting and culturology in essence. It will make the understanding of accounting more deeply and broadly if we study the accounting criterions and problems under the framework of accounting culturology.Since the research of international harmonization of accounting criterions will be placed under the framework of accounting culturology, we should clarify the relationship between the accounting culturology and accounting criterions firstly. First, as the existence of product form, the accounting culturology can be divided into three parts:the accounting material culturology, the accounting institution culturology and the accounting spiritual culturology. The accounting institution culturology is the mainstay. It is mainly composed by accounting law, accounting criterions, accounting institution and accounting ethics, etc. Predictably, accounting criterions are one important part of the accounting culturology, and they are also the guidance and binding embodiment of the human institution culturology in some specific accounting practice. Secondly, the accounting culturology including accounting criterions can only be realized with the help of accounting subject. It is the interaction and interdependence of the accounting material culturology as the basis, the accounting institution culturolog as the power and the accounting spiritual culturology as the ensurence.The difference across countries is the premise of the international harmonization of the accounting criterions. If the accounting criterions across countries are exactly the same, it is not necessary for us to compare, study and harmonize each other. So the prerequisite of the international accounting harmonization is the difference between China and western countries'accounting criterions. Any country's accounting is affected and limited by the accounting culturology and its circumstances. As the developing stages and the states of the circumstances between China and Western countries are quite different, the accounting culturology between China and Western countries will also be different. So the main cause of the difference of the accounting criterion across countries is the difference of the accounting culture caused by the different accounting circumstances across countries.What caused the international harmonization of the accounting criterions? Some scholars will attribute it to the globalization of the economy across countries. But they ignore the culture factors that hidden in the economic globalization, and they also ignore the influence of the overall social culture. The accounting criterions are among the accounting culture as embodiment of the overall institutional culture. So the accounting culture will be influenced heavily by the overall social culture as one part of it. The harmonization of the accounting criterions is generated by the harmonization of the accounting culture, which is one part of the harmonization of the overall social culture. Through the above review of the accounting history, we can make sure that the propagation and the cultivation of accounting culture play a great role in the development of the accounting culturology. Especially in the modern civilization exchanges and communication, the propagation of the accounting culture across countries and groups are more apparent. In the modern global economy, the whole world is composed as one commodity economy system. The trend facilitates the communication and harmonization between local culture and foreign cultures, which includes the accounting culturology.The contemporary globalization trend is the comprehensive exchanges and integration of the worldwide economy, politics and culture gradually. The common interests and common culture all over the world can be achieved through the collision, communication, competition and cooperation across countries, In general, the unity and diversity will exist simultaneous, which reflects the trend the integration and the assimilation of the culture and the society. But the difference of the accounting culturology will not disappear. The harmonization of the accounting culturology will only be a common development trend, and the difference will still last for a long time. So the development trend of the accounting criterions will be the integration of the internationalization and localization, and the integration of the unity and diversity.The original intention of the international accounting criterions is to enhance the comparability of the financial information across countries, and to improve the quality of financial reports which will benefit investors eventually. So the most direct expression of harmonization of accounting criterions is the comparability of the accounting information. During the process of accounting information system, the choice of accounting policy by enterprises must affect the information processing process, then affects the last generated financial reports eventually. So the harmonization of the accounting criterions will affect the comparability of the accounting policies used in the enterprises'financial reports mostly. There are many factors that may affect the choice of enterprises'accounting policies. The macroscopic level of one country's accounting culture is the major factor, and the micro enterprises'characteristics will also play their roles. We use 227 listed enterprises which adopt the international criterions as our sample. The enterprises come from 11 countries and 8 sectors. We focus on the determinants of the choice of inventory and depreciation method. We use the logit model to analyze how the characteristics of the country factor and the sector factor affect the choice of accounting criterions. The empirical results suggest that the country of domicile and sector of operations are each significant determinants of the choice of accounting method across countries. However, country differences still appear to be greater than sector differences, even allowing for differences between countries in industrial structure. The empirical results prove that one country's accounting culture circumstance is the most important factor that affect the process of the harmonization of the international accounting criterions. The results also demonstrate the development trend of the accounting criterions:the harmonization of the accounting criterions will develop towards the direction of both standardization and unification.The main contributions of the thesis are as follows:First, we analyze the harmonization of the international accounting criterions from the unique perspective of cultural philosophy. We reveal the internal development regularity and the trend of the accounting criterions. And we also put forward a new analysis framework for future research. We study the harmonization of the international accounting criterions under the framework of accounting circumstances. Through the analysis of the premise, reasons and trend ,of the harmonization, we reveal the essence and the trend of the international harmonization of accounting criterions on the one hand, and also put forward the framework for future research on the other hand.Second, we use the logit model to analyze the factors that may affect the choice of accounting criterions using the sample of 227 listed enterprises from 11 countries and 8 sectors. Currently, the empirical studies which studied the harmonization of the accounting criterions focused on the consistent of the provisions of the financial statements, and also focused on the comparability of the financial data(especially the surplus information) and the content of the financial information. The logit model can overcome the limitations of the index method used in the previous researches, and can analyze the factors that may affect the choice of accounting criterions both from the macro and the micro perspectives.