Determining a Consistent Set of Accounting and Financial Reporting Standards: A Research Note Based on the IASB-FASB Conceptual Framework Revision Project

Following the debate surrounding the Conceptual Framework revision jointly undertaken by the IASB and the FASB in May 2008, this paper identifies and discusses three major concerns about the way accounting and financial reporting standards should be determined for listed companies evolving in a global context, namely: (1) What is the role and purpose of a Conceptual Framework?; (2) For whom and for which needs are accounting and financial reporting standards made?; and (3) What information set should financial reporting provide? While examining prior literature, we show that the perceived need of a Conceptual Framework to provide theoretically grounded and consistent core objectives and principles in setting standards has resulted in practice in weak usefulness and may rather have served strengthening the political legitimacy of standard setters than meeting a not well defined public interest. Back to the IASB-FASB 2010 Framework, we note that arguments used to justify that general purpose financial statements should aim at satisfying the needs of identified primary users (e.g. investors) as a priority appear questionable. Similarly, the hypothesis according to which the content of these financial statements should aim at providing useful information to capital providers in making decisions about allocation of resources comes up against the impossibility to define a unified business decision model, that the multiplication of disclosure may not solve. Further discussions are still needed on dually-viewed principles such as quality/transparency, timing/timeliness, sustainable/transitory performance and value/price when grounding an accounting model with clearly identified assumptions.