The impact of culture on interpreting International Financial Reporting Standards in Poland. A comparative analysis with Germany and Great Britain
The impact of culture on interpreting International Financial Reporting Standards in Poland. A comparative analysis with Germany and Great Britain

Summary/Abstract: The problem of the impact of culture on interpreting financial reporting standards has taken on special significance in the currently ongoing process of accounting harmonization, aimed at creating a uniform system of solutions on a worldwide scale. Having realized the impact of cultural differences on the eco-nomic life, it is easier to understand what a complex and difficult process it may be, regarding the fact that harmonization did not choose the way of compromise but constitutes an attempt to impose one view-point – an Anglo-American one – on the entire world. Therefore it is important to find an answer to the question whether the accounting regulations based on the Anglo-American tradition would in fact be fully applicable in various cultural areas. The primary objective of this article is to illustrate the research project that is currently being carried out by the Department of Accounting at the University of Gdańsk: The Impact of Culture on Interpreting International Financial Reporting Standards in Poland – A Com-parative Analysis with Germany and Great Britain. We present adopted goals, hypotheses, the research methods and the significance of the project. We also discuss the basic theoretical framework of the influ-ence of culture on accounting and provide a brief review of the international literature of empirical as-sessment of Hofstede’s and Gray’s theories. The research covered by the presented project will be the first attempt at an empirical verification of both the hypothesis on the interpretation of the IFRS in Poland and the broadly defined cultural conditioning in the field of accountancy.

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