Determinants of accounting standards in the Southern African Development Community (SADC)

This paper reports on the factors influencing accounting standards in the South African Development Community (SADC). The factors have been identified on the basis of previous research (see Larson, Hofstede, Gray, Nobes, Parker, Muller, Doupnik, Doost, D'Arcy, to mention a few) and then analysed using the PESC analysis. A multinomial experiment using chi-square test is conducted to determine whether these factors are equally important to all member countries of the SADC. A chart of independence is used to determine whether the environmental factors and the countries are independent. For the purpose of both test, the member countries have been categorised into type A and type B. Type A include countries having their stock exchanges and type B those having no stock exchange. The reason behind this classification is to demonstrate whether there is a difference in the result of the experiment. The result of the experiment indicates that the countries and the environmental factors are independent.