Australia's switch to international financial reporting standards: a perspective from account preparers

Abstract

This study reports the findings of a structured telephone survey on adoption of international financial reporting standards (IFRS) from 60 firms drawn from among Australia's top 200 corporations. Although we find evidence of strong systematic variation in survey responses with factors such as firm size, industry background and expected impacts on financial performance, the general results indicate that many respondents have not been well prepared for the transition and are generally very sceptical about the claimed benefits of IFRS as enunciated in the government's Corporate Law Economic Reform Program. The results have implications to other international reporting jurisdictions, particularly the European Union, where adoption of IFRS is already underway. Copyright (c) The Authors Journal compilation (c) 2006 AFAANZ.

IFRS Adoption in Ghana: The Dimensions of Challenges Firms Encounter

“…This is not to say that no research has been conducted in this respect. In the case of companies in Australia, Jones and Higgins (2006) found that lack of enough preparation for IFRS adoption, difficulty in merging IFRS in internal controls relating to the management accounting system and limited expertise and knowledge of IFRS requirements are some of the challenges of IFRS adoption confronting firms. Jermakowicz and Gornik (2006) reported in their study of 112 EU listed companies that the respondents perceived IFRS implementation process to be costly, complex and burdensome.…”

A review of research on regulation changes in the Asia‐Pacific region

“…Crawford et al, 2014), policy choice (e.g. Stent et al, 2015), educational perspectives (Jackling et al, 2012), preparers perspectives (Jones and Higgins, 2006) and legal aspects (Bradbury and Van Zijl, 2006). Given the breadth and depth of research on IFRS adoption in the region, we intentionally leave aside the move towards adoption of IFRS as it is too vast to do justice to within the scope of this review.…”

A Review of the IFRS-Adoption Literature

“…Based on a survey of 60 managers from Australia's top 200 corporations, Jones and Higgins (2006) report that companies viewed their external auditors as the most involved party in the IFRS adoption process. Some of the respondents noted that auditors "would be instrumental-we don't have a big team, so they'll be pretty heavily involved" (Jones and Higgins 2006, p. 640).…”