<p>The purpose of this paper is to examine whether there is a difference between the respondent groups preparers and non-preparers position in IASBs question if a reversal of previously impaired goodwill should be prohibited. The background is an exposure draft sent out by the IASB and we examine the answers, in form of comment letters, sent in by the respondents to reach our purpose. Our method is positivistic in the sense that we study already existing theories when we create our hypothesis which gives our assumption about how the result of the respondent’s answers will be. Our data, which we have collected from the comment letters, is qualitative secondary data. When we draw our conclusions we’re using both empirics and logics, this method characterises the hypothetic-deductive method.</p><p>The theory we studied to reach our hypothesis mainly consisted of positive accounting theory, the agency theory and utility maximising theory. But we also studied existing laws, accounting standards and the special nature of goodwill as an asset to create a better understanding of how the different respondent groups would answer the question.</p><p>The result of our research showed us that more non-preparers than preparers supported IASBs proposition, but the difference between the groups was not large enough to generalize our result and we could not statistically establish any relation with help from our Chi2 test. The result that preparers to a large extent agreed with IASB is interesting because it doesn’t correspond with the theories about positive accounting theory, agency theory and the theory about utilising individuals that we have studied. From the result a few questions arise. Could it be that preparers aren’t as utilising as the theory says? Another theory that could answer this question is the stewardship theory.</p><p>Our conclusion after studying and analysing our theory and research results is that there in fact is a difference between the respondent groups preparers and non-preparers attitude towards IASBs proposal, even if the difference is smaller than we first thought.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA/oai:DiVA.org:hig-237 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Bergström, Anders, Fagrell, Mikael |
| Publisher | University of Gävle, Department of Business Administration and Economics, University of Gävle, Department of Business Administration and Economics |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, text |
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