A Neo-institutionalist Model of the Diffusion of IFRS Accounting Standards

The purpose of this study is to prepare a diffusion model of the new international accounting standards known as the international financial reporting standards (IFRS). This model fits within the neo-institutional conceptual framework; more specifically, we used the DiMaggio/Powell analytical grid. Our desire to prepare this model was born from the observation that the analytical framework that is generally used to study the adoption of these new standards is the neo-institutional framework and that the principal methodologies implemented are qualitative. The question addressed in this study regards the forces leading an agent—in this case, an organisation providing standards for accounting—to adopt, at a given moment, these new standards. Existing studies, as interesting as they might be, are devoted to the question of adoption and leave aside the question of diffusion. In other words, the evolution of the system as a whole in time is ignored. Constructing a model appeared to us to be a way to move beyond these limitations. This model allows us to formalise the forces at work in the DiMaggio/Powell representation and to simulate the diffusion processes of the IFRS. To this end, we implement a multi-agent simulation. The various simulation scenarios are then compared to the observed diffusion of the IFRS. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014