| Business is a "contracted combination" of interest individuals or groups, in which there are multiple levels of trust and agent relationships, at least including the relationships between owner and manager, between manager, employees (as well as accountants), between state and enterprises, and between creditors and enterprises. Interest groups in the contract are all "limited rational economic men". In order to maximize their interests, they would rather obtain the greatest interests from the "contracted combination" even at the price of other interest groups than hurt their own interests. Each interest group's realization of its interests is dependent on the decisions, which in turn are dependent on the quantity and quality of the information available for the interest group to make decisions, which mainly consists of accounting information. As for the interest groups in the contract, they try to get true and related accounting information, based on which they could make decisions. Accounting information is a product of conciliating the interest groups in an enterprise, whose quality thus is a key issue in the contract.In recent years, the accounting information distortion has deteriorated, which has a great impact on the national or regional economic development. This has drawn great concern from legislatures, government, investors, public and accounting specialists. It is more than an issue of accounting, but a social problem that has drawn great attention from the public. A large amount of research work has been done on the reasons to accounting information distortion and various causes as well as solutions have been found out both in the theoretical and practical fields of accounting, represented by the "Three Causes Theory", that is, "illegaldistortion, normative distortion and technical distortion", as well as by the "Two Causes Theory", namely "legal distortion and illegal distortion".Accounting information is the "product" of accountants, and the quality of accounting information is closely related to the behavior of accountants. Illegal accounting information distortion refers to the behaviors of accountants who make "falsified accounts" or "accounting information distortion" purposely, either objectively or subjectively. The objective reason is that the unsound market economic system provides environmental conditions of illegal accounting information distortion. It mainly includes the large existence of artificial factors in the process of market operation, the irrational behaviors of market managers and monitors, the non-market economic senses of market participants, the "soft constraints" of the hard rules and regulations. The subjective reason is the "limited sense" of the accounting information provider. It mainly includes the inconsistence of interests between the manager and owner, the failure of managers' regulating system, the irrational incentive mechanism of managers', the failure of the internal control system in an enterprise, and etc. But the illegal accounting information distortion is mainly due to the subjective reason, that is, accountants are driven by the interests. The interests of accountants are affected by various factors, particularly the objectives of the clients. Accountants' following the illegal accounting procedures is interests-oriented. It is just an unshakable excuse to condemn the low quality of accountants. Why the clients entrust the accountants of low quality rather than those of high quality? Isn't there any accountant of high quality? What's more, why don't the accountants improve themselves for the benefit of their work? Therefore, the illegal accounting information distortion is the procedure distortion caused by the interests oriented accountants.The legal distortion, normative distortion and technical distortion ofaccounting information are all actually consequential accounting information distortion. The objective reasons lie in the unsound accounting theories, the choices between accounting rules and accounting regulations; whil... |
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