IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wsi/tijaxx/v54y2019i02ns1094406019500082.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Development of Accounting and Financial Reporting Practices in Sri Lanka: An Exploratory Investigation

Author

Listed:
  • Jayasinghe Hewa Dulige

    (School of Business, Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia)

  • Nadana Abayadeera

    (Department of Accounting, Deakin University, Australia)

  • Muhammad Jahangir Ali

    (Department of Accounting and Data Analytics, La Trobe University, Australia)

  • Paul Mather

    (Department of Accounting and Data Analytics, La Trobe University, Australia)

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the factors that influence the development of accounting and reporting practices in Sri Lanka in the backdrop of its political and economic environment. We find that the early days of accounting in Sri Lanka were heavily influenced by the British colonial system. Subsequently, its greatest influence was derived from the regulatory and institutional framework backed by local and British professional accounting bodies. We also interview key stakeholders to draw insights on how the institutional factors contribute to the development of financial reporting in Sri Lanka. We discover that the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka (ICASL) is a key player in developing and implementing accounting standards and the best financial reporting practices. We observe that although the Sri Lankan Government has undertaken many initiatives to improve the quality of financial reporting, monitoring and enforcing regulations remain weak partly due to political interference. Therefore, we suggest that strengthening the existing regulatory mechanisms will help to improve the reporting quality and build investor confidence.

Suggested Citation

  • Jayasinghe Hewa Dulige & Nadana Abayadeera & Muhammad Jahangir Ali & Paul Mather, 2019. "The Development of Accounting and Financial Reporting Practices in Sri Lanka: An Exploratory Investigation," The International Journal of Accounting (TIJA), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 54(02), pages 1-36, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:tijaxx:v:54:y:2019:i:02:n:s1094406019500082
    DOI: 10.1142/S1094406019500082
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S1094406019500082
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1142/S1094406019500082?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Daniel Badulescu & Muhammad Nouman Akhtar & Mumtaz Ahmad & Mariam Abbas Soharwardi, 2021. "Accounting Policies, Institutional Factors, and Firm Performance: Qualitative Insights in a Developing Country," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(10), pages 1-20, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wsi:tijaxx:v:54:y:2019:i:02:n:s1094406019500082. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscinet/tija .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.