The Determination of a Group for Accounting Purposes in the UK, Poland, and the Czech Republic in a Supranational Context

A detailed cross-national and supranational comparison of the de jure requirements for the determination of a group for accounting purposes in the United Kingdom (UK), Poland, and the Czech Republic establishes differences at both levels. The analysis identifies cross-national differences that cannot be fully explained by non-equivalencies between relevant International Accounting Standards (IAS) and the European Commission (EC) 7th Directive on consolidated accounts. These differences are non-trivial and more numerous than the research literature suggests and provide evidence of the prolonged nature of the accounting reforms in economies in transition. In the absence of a theoretical framework for determining the content and sequence of accounting reform in transition, accounting change defaults to an iterative process of learning by doing.