Influence Of Culture On Accounting Essay

Culture influences our society with every decision we make, it is passed on from generation to generation. Those norms, values, and beliefs give some insight into how different aspects of society have an impact on personal lives as well as accounting. Environment does have an effect on accounting (Cerne, 2009). There are of course differences that do occur because of the adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), and Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP. Many studies have been performed to understand the attributes of culture. One study that of culture was by Geert Hofstede in the early 1980’s. It is because of his research that many have looked into the influence of culture on accounting. In an environment where many companies are multinational, accountants should be aware of the prejudices of other countries culture and differences in accounting. How do these differences lead to differences in interpreting standards and reporting financial information and why? These non-accounting factors also include differences in laws, politics, accounting education and the attitude toward the …show more content…
There are early research papers that look at the impact of culture on accounting one was written by Violet in 1983, where he argued that accounting is a ‘socio-technological activity’ that involved interaction between both human and non-human resources. Violet claimed that accounting cannot be considered culture-free. Since accounting is culturally determined, other cultural customs, beliefs, and institutions influence it (Thian Cheng Lim, 2012) . Review of other cross-cultural research also has shown that culture is a factor that influences a countries accounting practices as well as decision making by accountants (Parmod Chand,