While all of these approaches were perceived to be closely linked to economic or
business factors, a wider set of influences, for example, legal system, political system,
social climate were recognized as being relevant, though without precise specification,
to accounting development. Cultural factors received no explicit recognition, however, and were presumably subsumed in the set of environmental factors identified.
Mueller's analysis was adapted and extended by Nobes who based his classification on an evolutionary approach to the identification of measurement practices in developed Western nations. Nobes adopted a hierarchical scheme of classification in an endeavour to provide more subtlety and discrimination to the assessment of country differences. However, similarly to Mueller, no explicit mention was made of cultural factors. A basic distinction between microeconomic and macroeconomic systems was made together with a disaggregation between business economics and business practice orientations under a micro-based classification. This classification system was then tested by means of a judgmental analysis of national financial reporting systems in fourteen countries.
By way of contrast, the inductive approach to identifying accounting patterns begins with an analysis of accounting practices. Perhaps the most important contribution of this type was by Nair and Frank , who carried out a statistical analysis of accounting practices in forty-four countries. An empirical distinction was made between measurement and disclosure practices as these were seen to have different patterns of development.
The empirical results, using factor analysis applied to individual practices, showed
that in respect of the Price Waterhouse data it was possible to identify five groupings of countries, with Chile as a single-country 'group', in terms of measurement practices. The number of groupings increased to seven when disclosure practices were considered. The disclosure groupings, on the other hand, could not be described plausibly on a similar 'spheres-of-influence' classification on account of their apparent diversity.
Subsequent to the identification of groupings, Nair and Frank attempted to assess
the relationships of these groupings with a number of explanatory variables. While
relationships were established in respect of some of the variables which included language (as a proxy for culture), various aspects of economic structure and trading
ties, it was clear that there were differences as between the measurement and disclosure
groupings. However, the hypotheses that (a) cultural and economic variables might
be more closely associated with disclosure practices, and (b) trading variables might
be more closely associated with measurement practices were not supported. It is curious to note here that the language variable, as a proxy for culture, was perceived to be中小企业的成本核算文献综述和参考文献
a means of capturing similarities in legal systems which were thought to be particularly
important in the determination of disclosure patterns. This is questionable in itself,
but in any event no justification was given for the use of language as a proxy for culture.
From this brief review of some of the major studies in international classification
it seems clear that to date only very broad country groupings or accounting patterns
have been identified. At the same time, only very general relationships between
environmental factors and accounting patterns have been established.
The significance of culture in the context of prior classification research is far from clear. It may be that cultural influences have been generally subsumed in the
predominant concern with economic factors but this has not been made explicit.
Accordingly, the influence of culture on accounting would seem to have been largely
neglected in the development of ideas about international classifications.
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