Influence of Globalization and Integration Processes on Accounting Regulations on the Example of Poland

Purpose: The growing internationalization of the economies of individual countries, imposes on the national regulators the processes of harmonization and standardization in the accounting rules. The last 20-30 years, we have witnessed significant transformation of financial reporting of companies (changing forms of presentation and content of the reports). These changes result from the transformation of national economies caused by: 1) internal processes (change of ownership, the appearance of new legal forms of business and new financial instruments, changes in management methods, etc.), 2) external processes (increasing globalization and integration). This second group of factors is particularly important in countries such as Poland, which, in a relatively short period of time, restructured its economic system from state-controlled economy to a market economy, at the same time, intensively joined the European integration, thus implementing a number of regulations applied by the EU. The purpose of this paper is to determine the effect of changes in accounting regulations caused by the processes of globalization and integration (mainly European) on a national accounting model. Conclusions and findings: The processes of globalization and integration have a significant impact on changes in national accounting models. These changes are intended to ensure the comparability of the effectiveness of the companies in transnational scale. The most important influence on the financial reporting in Poland, during the system transformation, had the EU Directive, and in the last 10 years - IFRS. However, it should be noted, that at this stage of development, it is not yet possible to fully standardize financial reporting, even in countries belonging to the same economic and cultural region of the world. Practical implication: The structured knowledge about the experience in the implementation of international practices and regulations of the accounting of given country makes it easier to predict the possible reaction of business practice and legislation changes in the future (will allow predict the speed and depth of changes and the level of acceptance and perception of new reporting requirements, both by preparing reports, as well as the users of these reports). This knowledge is particularly important for policy makers and regulators because will allow them to plan properly the process of legislative changes. Design/methodology/approach: The research methodology will include an analysis of the foreign and Polish literature on the subject, the review of polish, EU and worldwide accounting regulations, the inductive and deductive methods. The inductive method should prove useful in analysing the literature and law. The main conclusions will be drawn using scenario of deductive methods. Originality/value: A number of scholarly articles on the changes in Polish accounting regulations in the last 20-25 years were published so far. However, they lack a clear indication of the relationship of these changes to the global processes of globalization and European integration. This article is an attempt to fill this gap.