A NEW APPROACH TO THE PROBLEM OF HARMONIZING INTERNATIONAL ACCOUNTING REPORTS

Mohammad S. Bazaz, Ravi Parameswaran, and Bijoy Bordoloi

With the globalization of financial markets, the need for comparability of worldwide financial reports is more critical than ever. Organizations such as the UN, EC, OECD, and IASC have worked hard to achieve harmonization and uniformity. Despite all these efforts, much still remains to be done. Differences in levels of industrialization, education, social, economic and political goals, nationalism and many other factors are major obstacles toward harmonization. Contemporary opinion holds that it is impractical to achieve universally accepted international standards in the foreseeable future. Therefore, an alternative method to achieve comparability of worldwide financial reports is needed. The current authors believe that a technological, computer based solution is feasible and present a conceptual framework for developing an expert system supported by a thoughtfully developed distributed database that would be capable of converting any standard based financial statement into a unique international standard based one.