The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants recently made a decision to adopt
accounting standards issued by the International Accounting Standards Committee rather than
continuing to develop standards locally. Reasons used to justify this policy change include: the
lack of resources to develop accounting standards from a zero base and, with what has been
classified as the sub-standard financial reporting that occurs in South Africa. By adopting
International Accounting Standards, amending the standard-setting process and providing legal
backing for these standards, the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants aims to
improve the standard of financial reporting.
It will be argued that this decision will effect the contribution preparers of financial
statements make to the standard-setting process. Corporate management as preparers of
financial information participate in this process by reacting to proposed statements of generally
accepted accounting practice in a number of ways, including lobbying the standard-setting body.
This thesis aims to establish the views of South African corporate managers to the proposed
changes to the accounting standard-setting process which incorporates the adoption of
international accounting standards.
To achieve this objective, the responses of South African corporate managers to the first
six exposure drafts issued by the Accounting Practices Committee based on International
Accounting Standards are examined to supply evidence that is descriptive in nature and which
provides additional support for the findings of the empirical study.
Forty hypotheses were developed and tested in an attempt to establish the views of
executives to various issues relating to the accounting standard-setting process, corporate
managers as the producers of firm specific financial information, the regulation of accounting,
management incentive schemes and the international harmonisation of accounting standards.
The tests of the hypotheses together with the findings of the individual case studies, provide
evidence to suggest that this new disposition effectively marginalises South African corporate
managers from the accounting standard-setting process. Finally, it is concluded that the
existence of a management compensation/incentive scheme, is unlikely to influence corporate
management's reaction to a proposed accounting standard. / Auditing / D. Compt. (Applied Accountancy)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:unisa/oai:uir.unisa.ac.za:10500/17657 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Samkin, James Grant |
| Contributors | Becker, H. M. R. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (xii, 400 leaves) |
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