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The fundamental question on the internationalisation of accounting standards is whether a nation should harmonise with international standards or not. This paper addresses this question with particular reference to the special circumstances of Japan. The discussion suggests that Japan's unique features such as stable shareholdings, the ‘Keiretsu’, and the ‘main bank’ form the conclusion that harmonisation might be unwise. However, some recent signs of change in Japan, including the breakdown of cross‐shareholding arrangements and a greater emphasis on corporate profitability, are more in keeping with the conventional business practices of the West and suggests there may be benefits to harmonisation. This paper presents some survey evidence for and against accounting harmonisation and analyses certain management attitudes in Japan and a number of other industrial nations towards adopting the IAS.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the perceptions of: how Japanese financial firms (JFF) acquire and use company intellectual capital (IC) information in their common routine equity investment decisions, how this activity contributes to knowledge creation in the JFFs, and how investee company knowledge creation is affected by the JFFs.

The research employed a multi‐case design, using four JFF cases. The investigation was performed in terms of Nonaka and Toyama's “theory of the knowledge creating firm”.

IC information contributed to earnings estimates and company valuation. Emotional information contributed to JFF feelings and confidence in their information use and valuation. JFF knowledge was an important component of the key interacting and informed contexts used by JFFs. This generated opportunities to improve disclosure and accountability between JFFs and their investee companies. Common patterns of behaviour across the JFFs were counterbalanced by variety and differences noted in JFF behaviour.

The findings provide important insights into how JFF knowledge creating patterns could limit or progress a common language of communication between companies and markets on the subject of IC. This could impact on the quality of corporate disclosure and accountability processes.

The paper demonstrates that there is a need for further use of qualitative studies of financial market behavior. Especially in the area of understanding the communication of IC between firms and financial markets, the potential of using sociology of finance approaches appears to be considerable.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight how, and why, some small and medium‐sized high‐tech Japanese firms apply and assess the “intellectual asset‐based management” (IAbM) guidelines issued by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in October 2005.

This is an interpretive case study linking semi‐structured interview and document data from four Japanese firms that have issued IAbM reports containing ideas about the processes of creating knowledge and routines in their organizations.

The findings indicate that the firms studied essentially follow the guidelines, although pinpointing how this affects their internal management is difficult. The IAbM report is primarily used for external communication, with the capital market and with existing and potential customers.

The practical implications found in this paper relate mainly to the four challenges found already in research by Johanson, i.e. uniqueness versus comparability, confidentiality versus accountability, market communication and management control.

The unique features of this paper are found mainly in the empirical parts, where the guidelines and the sample of small and medium‐sized Japanese firms form an interesting and seldom used empirical point of departure. The findings concerning actual use and interpretation of a guideline could also, of course, be regarded as a distinctive aspect of this paper.

The purpose of the present paper is to discuss the Guideline for Intellectual Property Information Disclosure (GIPID) in relation to the ambitious aspirations behind the guideline and in that way develop a future research agenda aiming at addressing the main challenges regarding the construction of guidelines for future IC reporting.

The purpose will be achieved by comparing the GIPID with two other IC guideline proposals, namely MERITUM and the Danish Guideline for Intellectual Capital Statements, respectively, from a capital market communication perspective and from a management control perspective. References are made to 12 Japanese companies that have published IP reports. The sample companies operate in a wide range of nine industries covering, for example, security, manufacturing, transportation, and chemistry, and comprise large as well as small firms.

The study identifies four major challenges for intellectual capital guidelines and reporting. These challenges regard market communication, management control, uniqueness versus comparability, and confidentiality versus accountability. The paper concludes with a number of questions of vital importance for future research within the research area.

This is one of the first papers that discuss the Japanese Guideline for Intellectual Property Information Disclosure as well as to compare it with similar European guidelines.