Aminah Abdullah

A 'macro' analysis of the use of XBRL

eXtensible business reporting language (XBRL) is increasingly used for reporting to shareholders, filing with stock exchange regulators and for decision making and taxation purposes. This paper provides a macro analysis of the use of XBRL in the USA and UK and highlights some directions for further research. It finds that the pace of XBRL adoption across countries and industries varies. The country analysis suggests that there has been greater support and adoption of XBRL in the USA as compared to the UK. Moreover, XBRL seems to be widely used in the financial services sector as compared to others. This paper identifies several areas for research at the macro country and industry level and the micro company level. It is argued that greater support from the accounting profession and regulators is required to raise XBRL awareness and speed the pace of adoption in practice.

The relevance of International Financial Reporting Standards to Kazakhstan: perception of auditors

This paper discusses the relevance of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) to emerging economies in general and Kazakhstan in particular. It uses evidence from interviews conducted with senior auditors from two Big Four accountancy firms in Kazakhstan and prior studies exploring IFRS implementation in emerging economies to shed light on how complex institutional and cultural factors influence accounting. The findings suggest that accounting practices in Kazakhstan are dominated by the historically inherited institutionalised accounting system of the Soviet Union era, when corporate reporting was primarily geared towards meeting the needs of government agencies such as Statistics Committee and tax authorities. The main problems of implementing IFRS in Kazakhstan were pressures to comply with tax codes and the early stage of development of the accounting profession with the consequent lack of IFRS expertise and deficient IFRS enforcement mechanisms.

The governmentality and accountability of UK national museums and art galleries

Abstract This study furthers our understanding of the role of governmentality mechanisms in relation to other-forming and self-forming accounts of art organisations, by using empirical data collected from interviews with senior managers of UK national museums and art galleries (MAGs) and from secondary published sources. The findings highlight how governmentality mechanisms had power-effects through the creation of knowledge about MAGs and the resistance strategies of MAGs. Whilst the governmentality mechanisms were expected to ensure the automatic functioning of disciplinary power, in some instances the government directly intervened to over-ride decisions taken by senior managers when these conflicted with political imperatives.