Lobbying na Regulação Contábil: Evidências do Setor Petrolífero

Abstract

This work aims to identify the determining factors in the submission of comment letters to the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) on the discussion paper Extractive Activities as a lobbying strategy in the context of accounting regulation. The results show that size is a determining factor in all models used, indicating that large oil companies are more likely to lobby. This tendency is especially evident for companies that are predominantly opposed to the IASB proposals, which suggests that the IASB's review/replacement of International Financial Reporting Standards 6 (IFRS 6) will be a complex process subject to pressure from oil companies to maintain the status quo.

Accounting practices and regulations for extractive industries: a framework for harmonisation

“…This attempt by the FASB confirms the unsuccessful approach of harmonisation based on direct eliminating accounting method(s) in favour of a single method. It also confirms the powerful lobbying impact of the EI against standards and regulations that do not meet their preference, the FC companies in this case (dos Santos and dos Santos, 2014).…”

“…These include, but not limited to political pressure, regulatory framework and availability of alternative choices (Nobes and Parker, 1981; Watts and Zimmerman, 1990; Wallace and Gernon, 1991). Harmonising accounting practices by EI, in comparison to the cases of other corporations, has not yet been achieved for a number of reasons: EI firms would lobby against regulations and standards that may impact their financial positions and/or performance (dos Santos and dos Santos, 2014). EI firms are politically powerful (Brock et al , 1987; Gray et al , 2019) to the extent that efforts of accounting bodies to standardise accounting practices by these firms have been subject to lobbying and, therefore, rendered them unsuccessful (Russell and Tarbert, 2006; Cortese et al , 2009; Kang, 2016).…”

“…EI firms would lobby against regulations and standards that may impact their financial positions and/or performance (dos Santos and dos Santos, 2014).…”

“…The mining, oil and gas sectors, collectively referred to as the extractive industries (hereinafter EI) (International Accounting Standard Committee (IASC), 2000), are globally significant economically, environmentally and politically (Brock et al , 1987; Gray et al , 2019). The EI have, for almost a century, been deploying different accounting methods even for companies operating in the same jurisdiction (Brock et al , 1987; Pacter, 2001; dos Santos and dos Santos, 2014; Gray et al , 2019). The variation in accounting methods on the capitalisation or expensing of similar expenditure items by companies, has been at the core of the historical accounting controversies associated with EI (Brock et al , 1987; Cortese, 2011).…”

“…Accounting for EI has been a concern for academics and professionals for decades and has gained attention in the existing literature. One strand of literature has focused on debates relating to lobbying by EI firms (Russell and Tarbert, 2006; Cortese et al , 2009; Cortese, 2011; dos Santos and dos Santos, 2014), other strand has discussed the diversity in accounting practices and regulations (Field, 1969; Brock et al , 1987; Gerhardy, 1999; Karapinar et al , 2012). Others have analysed reporting practices by the EI as well as the accounting challenges and how they are currently dealt with by accounting standards (Luther, 1995, 1996, 1998; Gray et al , 2019), examined the arguments for the different accounting methods (Baker, 1976; Deakin, 1979) and analysed the value relevance of different methods (Myers, 1974; Sunder, 1976; Bandyopadhyay, 1994; Bryant, 2003; Power et al , 2017), evaluated the successfulness of IFRS 6 in harmonising accounting practices by EI (Abdo, 2016), evaluated fitness of the current accounting standards for EI (Cortese et al , 2022) and suggested divergence from IFRS 6 to International Accounting Standards (IASs) 38 (Nobes and Stadler, 2021).…”