Dimensions of National Culture and the Accounting Environment - The Spanish Case

Abstract

Gray (1988) has put forward a hypothesis on how a national accounting environment might reflect the cultural dimensions identified by Hofstede (1980Hofstede ( , 1983. A number of studies have tested Gray's hypothesis, including one by Pourjalali and Meek (1995) which identified a match between changes in cultural dimensions and the accounting environment in Iran following the revolution.In this paper we replicate this work in the context of Spain following the death of Franco in 1975 and the emergence of a democratic constitution in 1978. Specifically, we: 1) Consider Gray's hypothesis built on Hofstede's cultural dimensions and review some empirical tests of the hypotheses. 2) Building on the work of Hofstede and Gray, we: put forward some hypotheses on how we would expect cultural dimensions to change in Spain with the transition to democracy.3) Review developments in accounting in Spain following the transition to democracy, in order to identify how well these fit with our hypotheses.

The impact of environmental factors on accounting development: an Egyptian longitudinal study

“…Intra-country studies on the effect of environmental factors on accounting practices have received little attention from researchers. The few studies that focused on a single country rather than cross-national level either focused on measuring and relating the level of disclosure with firm characteristics in one country (e.g., Cooke, 1989;Wallace, 1990) or were descriptive in nature (e.g., Pourjalali & Meek, 1995;Amat et al, 2000) 3 . In this study, we adopt a single-country approach using Egypt to empirically examine the relationship between accounting and its environment in a longitude analysis.…”

“…Using Gray's (1988) accounting factors, Pourjalali and Meek (1995) examined four major changes in the accounting environment: (1) lower professional power and more statutory control; (2) higher uniformity of the accounting practices between companies; (3) higher conservatism which reflects a cautious in the measurement; (4) higher secrecy that reflects a trend to hold the information and not openly disclose it. Amat et al (2000) replicate Pourjalali and Meek (1995) work using Spain following the death of Franco in 1975 and the emergence of a democratic constitution in 1978. With increased democracy they find that both financial and management accounting exhibited a higher degree of professional influence, lower conservatism and lower secrecy.…”

The Effect of Motivational Values on Professionalism in Accounting

“…Gray sees a strong link between professionalism and the cultural dimension of individualism (Oriol Amat et al, 1998).…”

Muhasebe Kültürü İle İlgi̇li̇ Seçi̇lmi̇ş Bazi Çalişmalarin Ampi̇ri̇k Anali̇zi̇

“…Tablo 3'te konuyla ilgili bazı çalışmalar özetlenmiştir (Doupnik ve Tsakumis, 2004 ve Kolesnik, 2013'ten özetlenmiştir). İncelenen ilk çalışma olan Amat , Blake, Wraith & Oliveras (1999)'ta yazarlar ampirik bir araştırma yapmamış olmalarına rağmen demokrasiye geçiş ve daha sonra Avrupa birliğine üyelik sürecinde İspanya'da meydana gelen kültürel değişimleri irdeleme yönünden ilginç bulunduğu için çalışmaya dahil edilmiştir. Olimid ve Calu (2006), bilindiği kadarıyla ilk olarak direkt Gray'in muhasebe değerlerini ölçmeye yönelik hazırlanmış bir anket formu kullanmışlardır.…”