International convergence: analysis of the relationship between the normative process and the composition of the iasb members

Abstract

The IASB, International Accounting organization that leads the convergence of accounting standards, suffers criticism ranging from the creation and formation until the regulatory process itself. Such criticism seek to bring the idea that drives in the preparation of accounting standards and changes end up following a schedule in accordance with the interests of the major countries that finance the organization, as well as their sponsoring companies. Accordingly, the objective of this study is to analyze the accounting standards that have a higher level of inconsistencies between local and international GAAP and assess whether they have changed due to geographic participation of members of the organization. Therefore, it was used as the search basis the GAAP Convergence 2001, which shows the differences between the local and international standards from 60 countries worldwide. It was drawn, then, a database containing such information, updated until 2010, besides a database containing the historical composition of the IASB members for the same period. The rules that were modified by IFRS were also included and the analyzes were performed in a qualitative way. The results show that there is no evidence of loss of neutrality from the participation of the IASB members, taking as a point that the continents with the highest representation does not have a higher level of standards with differences modified by the body through the IFRS, although these continents show a higher amount of local regulatory differences when compared with the IAS and IFRS. Based on the results, it can be inferred that the IASB regulatory process seeks to reduce the differences globally, bringing a set of standards based on the theoretical framework of accounting and which may be applied in a general way, without any differentiation by the organization to the reduction of differences in specific continents. As a suggestion, future research may deal with countries individually and their stages in the convergence process, as well as a possible identification, more specifically, in the standards development process, ensuring that the comments received through the Comment Letters to the IASB have some work on when processed by the body.