The impact of culture on interpreting International Financial Reporting Standards in Poland. A comparative analysis with Germany and Great Britain

The problem of the impact of culture on the interpretation of financial reporting standards has taken on special significance in the currently ongoing process of accounting harmonization, aimed at the creation of a uniform system of solutions on a worldwide scale. The establishment of supranational organizations and enterprises has complicated international economic relations and revealed the need to standardize accounting regulations, both within individual countries and supranational communities. Having realized the impact of cultural differences on economic life, it is easier to understand what a complex task the process of harmonizing is and how difficult, if not impossible „implanting to a given country of new accounting solutions different in their essence and origin from the previous ones” (Kabalski, 2009, p. 18) may prove to be. Currently we can observe such phenomena in connection with the adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) to the regulations of continental Europe, including Poland 1 . It should be stressed that the harmonization did not choose the way of compromise but constitutes an attempt to impose one viewpoint – an Anglo-American one – on the entire world. This means discarding the legacy of other countries, such as Germany or France. In the modern world, as Gierusz says (2001, p. 142) „what is English or American has a global dimension, and what comes from other countries has a local dimension”. Therefore it is important to find an answer to the question whether the accounting regulations based on the Anglo-American tradition would in fact be fully applicable