An investigation into the influence of cultural factors in the international lobbying of the International Accounting Standards Committee: The case of E32, Comparability of Financial Statements

This article investigates the influence of cultural factors on the corporate comment letters sent concerning the International Accounting Standards Committee's exposure draft 32, Comparability of Financial Statements, to test Gray's hypothesized linkages between accounting values and the cultural values identified by Hofstede. For cultural values, content analyses results were consistent with the power distance and individualism hypotheses but only partly supported the femininity-masculinity and uncertainty avoidance hypotheses. For accounting subcultural values, strong support was found for the Anglo and Nordic companies' hypothesis but only weak support was evident for the Germanic and More developed Latin companies' hypothesis.