IFRS 8, on segment reporting, has been, so far, the only IASB standard whose endorsement for use in the European Union has been taken up by the European Parliament. It requires the reporting of operating segments that are used internally by the company when it makes operating decisions. IFRS 8, which was issued in November 2006, mirrored the Financial Accounting Standards Board's SFAS 131 and thus was viewed as an importation of U.S. GAAP into Europe via the IASB, a politically charged argument. Yet news articles in Accountancy Age reported that its substantive content, wholly apart from its provenance, was controversial. Was it politics or a dispute over proper accounting that explained the interest by a committee of the Parliament?
The researchers' aim was to learn whether a sample of stakeholders believes that this special attention by the Parliament was because the standard's substantive content was controversial or because, instead,...
