PRINCIPLES- AND RULES-BASED ACCOUNTING DEBATE. IMPLICATIONS FOR AN EMERGENT COUNTRY

By a qualitative analysis, this research observes whether a principles-based system or a mixed version of it with the rules-based system, applied in Romania - an emergent country - is appropriate taking into account the mentalities, the traditions, and other cultural elements that were typical of a rules-based system. We support the statement that, even if certain contextual variables are common to other developed countries, their environments significantly differ. To be effective, financial reporting must reflect the firm's context in which it is functioning. The research has a deductive approach based on the analysis of the cultural factors and their influence in the last years. For Romania it is argue a lower accounting professionalism associated with a low level of ambiguity tolerance. For the stage analysed in this study (after the year 2005) the professional reasoning - a proxy for the accounting professional behaviour - took into consideration the fiscal and legal requirements rather than the accounting principles and judgments. The research suggest that the Romanian accounting practice and the professionals are not fully prepared for a principles-based system environment, associated with the ability to find undisclosed events, facing ambiguity, identifying inferred relationships and using intuition, respectively working with uncertainty. We therefore reach the conclusion that in Romania institutional amendments affecting the professional expertise would be needed. The accounting regulations must be chosen with great caution and they must answer and/ or be adjusted, even if the process would be delayed, to national values, behaviour of companies and individual expertise and beliefs. Secondly, the benefits of applying accounting reasoning in this country may be enhanced through a better understanding of their content and through practical exercise. Here regulatory bodies may intervene for organizing professional training programs and acting towards the improvement of the codes of conduct's effectiveness.