Gray (1988) has put forward a hypothesis on how a national accounting environment might reflect the cultural dimensions identified by Hofstede (1980, 1983). A number of studies have tested Gray's hypothesis, including one by Pourjalali and Meek (1995) which identified a match between changes in...

In Spain both accounting practice and accounting research have been strongly influenced by accounting practices developed in the English speaking world. This paper: 1) Summarizes a seminal English paper, the 'Corporate Report', that identified the potential for accounting reports to serve a wide...

During the 1990's studies of management accounting practices in Europe and in Latin America have given us data on 23 countries. In this paper we use this data to identify five distinct aspects of national management accounting culture being: 1. The influence of regulations on official...

'Creative accounting' involves accountants in making accounting policy choices or manipulating transactions in such a way as to give the impression in the accounts that they prefer. While regarded as unethical by most observers, a defence of creative accounting can be based on the ability of the...

In 1990 a new Spanish 'Plan General de Contabilidad' (PGC) implemented the requirements of the EU 4th and 7th Directives in Spain. Included in the PGC is the requirement, derived from the 4th Directive, that accounts should present a 'true and fair view', in Spanish 'imagen fiel'. Where the term...

Recent research shows that financial reports are losing relevance. Mainly this is due to the growing strategic importance of intangible assets in the performance of a company. A possible solution is to modify accounting standards so that statements include more self-generated intangible assets,...

From the year of its foundation, until the foundation of Revista de Contabilidad in 1997, REFC has been the only referred accounting journal in Spain. Published by the Spanish Association for Accounting and Business Administration (AECA), this journal is at the heart of the emergence of a...

This study presents a portrait of the Spanish academic accounting community in 1995, based upon a questionnaire circulated to Spanish accounting academics in 1995 and upon an analysis of authorship and citations in the main Spanish accounting journals. The approach to these analyses is grounded...

After the accounting scandals that have taken place mainly in the United States during the last years, some Spanish leading authorities have defended the idea that this kind of accounting problems cannot happen in Spain. They argue that accounting regulation in Europe, and specifically in Spain,...

There is a substancial literature on the accounting procedures needed to track down the costs of quality control and quality failure. In a drive for improved quality the changes in the process of production or service delivery will also give rise to new accounting needs. In this article we take...