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This study aims to provide empirical evidence on the determinants of voluntary integrated reporting (<IR>) disclosure quality.

The samples include companies from the Integrated Reporting Examples Database on the International Integrated Reporting Committee’s (IIRC) website, except South Africa and Brazil, where reporting is mandatory. The final sample includes 29 countries, with 148 companies and 592 observations for the study period 2014–2017. Content analysis is used to measure <IR> disclosure quality derived from the <IR> principles and elements published by IIRC (2013). The fraction regression probit model is used to test the proposed hypothesis.

This study provides empirical evidence that competition from new entrants and country-level accounting competence encourage companies to implement the International Integrated Reporting Framework (IIRF). Signaling theory and diffusion of innovation theory can be used to explain this association. Meanwhile, product market competition of existing rivals has been found to reduce the adoption of the <IR> framework, which is consistent with the proprietary cost theory. Finally, this study finds that company reputation does not affect voluntary <IR> disclosure quality.

This study did not examine the barriers to entry to explain the effect of competition from new entrants as a possible determinant of <IR> disclosure quality. Furthermore, the inclusion of <IR> in the accounting curriculum of universities and certification bodies in certain countries has not been considered as a control variable. The results might also be limited to companies that voluntarily submitted into the Integrated Reporting Examples Database on the IIRC website. All these limitations provide ample avenues for future research.

This research provides implications for governments and standard setters to further sharpen the competence of accountants through memberships in professional accountancy organisations or through training and seminars related to <IR>. The results also suggest that universities should include the topic of <IR> in the accounting program curriculum to increase the understanding of prospective accountants about this reporting regime. The results also show differences on the impact of competition between new entrants and existing rivals on <IR> disclosure quality. This can be used by IIRC or other standard setters to predict the <IR adoption>.

This study uses the diffusion of innovation theory to explain the association between country-level accounting competence and <IR> disclosure quality. Few studies have researched this association. The results show that a country’s accounting competence increases the application of the IIRF in corporate reporting. <IR> has been considered an innovation in corporate reporting and can be implemented by the company if its professional accountants have enough knowledge of this reporting framework.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the indirect effect of the International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) adoption in increasing the foreign investors’ ownership through the improvement of comparability of financial statements.

This study employs listed companies in 18 countries across Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia with an observation period from 2003 to 2012. Unlike previous studies, this study uses a continuous variable to measure the level of IFRS adoption which is measured at the country level. This study includes countries that do not fully adopt the IFRS, partially adopt, make some delays in adoption or some modifications to IFRS.

The results show that the level of IFRS adoption has a positive effect on the comparability of financial statements. The level of IFRS adoption indirectly increases the foreign investors’ ownership through the comparability of financial statements. These results are consistent with proponents for IFRS adoption which argue that the adoption improves the comparability of financial statements that in turn attracts greater cross-border investment.

The findings of this study need to be interpreted with caution due to limitations. Although this research provides a detail measurement on the IFRS adoption, this study only looks at three general items of difference in adopting the IFRS. “Differences in text” used in this research has not quantified detail differences for each adopted standards. Therefore, future research can use a more in-depth measurement of the IFRS adoption level that considers differences or exceptions of accounting treatment.

The results suggest that the standards setting bodies’ (IASB) strategy on promoting the IFRS and objectives to develop a standard that leads to increase the financial statement comparability have been achieved. This research shows that the IFRS adoption plays a role in ensuring the financial statement quality in terms of its comparability. It implies that the standard-setting bodies in every country, as one of the responsible institutions regulating the business environment, can be entrusted with a greater role in order to ensure better financial information quality.

This study introduces novel measurement that is more detailed in measuring the IFRS adoption level instead of applying the discrete variable approach (“adopt” and “not adopt”) performed by previous studies (DeFond et al., 2011; Tan et al., 2011; Lee and Fargher, 2010). This study does not only cover some EU countries but also covers some countries in Asia, Africa, and Australia, so it can be better at capturing the variation of the IFRS adoption outside the EU. This broader coverage will show the consistency of the benefits of IFRS adoption. This study is most closely related to that of DeFond et al. (2011). This research extends DeFond’s study with some important differences as follows: it uses output-based and firm-specific measurement of the comparability from DeFranco et al. (2011), which is deemed to be more appropriate because it represents the qualitative characteristics of financial statements from a user’s perspective, i.e., investors, who evaluate historical performance and predict future performance in their investment decisions; it uses a broader scope of institutional investors; and it covers IFRS adoption in countries outside the EU for a longer observation period.

The purpose of this study is to examine the perception of practitioners, auditors, and academics about important issues on International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) convergence in Indonesia as well as the plan to fully adopt IFRS in Indonesia. Indonesia is one of the emerging countries with distinct features that could shed some lights on IFRS convergence issues. Total respondents of our study are 170 (consist of 43 practitioners, 50 auditors, and 77 academics). The authors find that the respondents are quite familiar with IFRS as well as IFRS convergence in Indonesia. There are several challenges in IFRS convergence in Indonesia, namely complexity to measure fair value, complexity of IFRS-based accounting standards, and tax and accounting standard differences. Regarding the plan to fully adopt IFRS, respondents in average agree that the most significant benefit of IFRS full adoption is IFRS create uniformity in global financial reporting. However, there are several obstacles: lack of education, understanding, and experience by preparers of financial reports with the use of IFRS based, coordination and collaboration among global regulators, and required changes in accounting standards. Majority of respondents do agree that Indonesia fully adopt IFRS, and they stated that it will take at least three to five years for Indonesia to fully adopt IFRS.