Main Worldwide Cultural Obstacles on Adopting International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)

Abstract

In recent times, the history of a country’s culture has become increasingly recognised as a crucial factor in its accounting methods. The globalization of the practice of economics has lead to homogenous international standards which are at the core of its development for practitioners, researchers and academics. This research considered some factors that might influence the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) as cultural obstacles. This study investigates the religion, the language, technical skill and expertise as main cultural obstacles for the adoption of IFRS worldwide.Findings revealed the incompatibility of many IFRS with principles of Islamic religion, and also many non- English countries apply wrong implementation of IFRS because of translation issues of IFRS from English to their local languages. This study concluded that it is difficult to adopt IFRS in some countries and for some institutions because of the insufficient technical skill and experience of accountants and auditors to deal with those standards.