MISUNDERSTANDING OF ROLE AND POSITION OF ACCOUNTING STANDARD SETTING AUTHORITIES TO REDUCE INFORMATION ASYMMETRY: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE OF IRAN

Abstract

Purpose - Critical role of accounting and financial reporting is providing useful information for different and entitled users to help them in making economical decisions. While repeatedly it is stressed that the quality of financial information is a function of both the quality of accounting standards and the regulatory enforcement, it is vital that standard setting authorities bodies to have independence and suitable enforcement power to guarantee their issued standards implementation with accountants in preparing and releasing accounting information, where their enacting mechanisms differ significantly across countries, even being non-existent in some countries. This study seeks with aid of Abdolmohammadi’s enforcement powers classification of standards (2002) including: Reward, Legitimate, Referent, Expert and Coercive Powers, determine from perspective of respondents and current condition of accounting profession, which powers are dominant, besides it also tends to evaluate past performance of Iranian accounting regulatory. Design/methodology/approach - in order to test two main hypotheses of the study, a suitable questionnaire was used with some questions about current condition of enforcement ways of accounting standards in Iran. 281 questionnaires distributed among accounting related financial society members including: accountants, auditors, bank specialists, and accounting students as agents of financial society. After assuring of its validity and reliability, collected data tested by Kruskal-Wallis, Friedman, and T-test statistical methods. Findings - The results showed that among various enforcement accounting standards powers respondents believe coercive power is more apparent and main motivation for providing accounting formal reports in accordance to GAAP come from managers’ concern of blocking their companies stock dealing by Tehran Stock Exchange organization, besides they accept standard setting professional abilities. Also respondents believe that Iran’s Audit organization in standard setting process has had behaved unfairly and didn’t pay attention to regulate accounting of governmental and Not-For-Profits parts as equal as large private corporation accounting. Research limitation/implication - A key technical result is that the five original powers of enforcement accounting standards don’t have equal weight and influence on current accounting environment of Iran and to enhance disclosure quality and reduce information asymmetry, some work must been done to more highlight powers with positive and professional perspective. Practical implications - The paper will be of interest to standards setting authority bodies’ when regulating accounting information releasing process to achieve high level of market efficiency and also to academics’ investigating the reliability and value of current standard setting condition. Originality value - The paper reports an original application of accounting standard enforcement origins as a determinant level of dominance financial wisdom in financial society of Iran.Accounting standard, enforcement powers, Information asymmetry, financial wisdom, and fairness in standard setting.