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ABSTRACT: Accounting harmonization has imposed on a certain stage of economic and social development, as a practical necessity, seeking coordination based on uniform standards of accounting work. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of general accounting framework for harmonization financial statements aiming to be a starting point for research, without exhausting the subject. The main source of information used to achieve this paper was a preliminary documentation in order to understand theoretical concept regarding the demarcation of the harmonization concept.
KEY WORDS: harmonization; financial statements; international accounting standards; IASB; normalization.
JEL CLASIFICATION: M40.
1. INTRODUCTION
Harmonization of international accounting could be defined as an institutional process that is seeking to ensure consistency between national accounting rules and practices to ease comparisons between financial statements prepared by companies in different countries. The objective of harmonization is to ensure data equivalence and not their uniformity (Colasse, 2000, p.757). With initially only one national character, the normalization process formalizes and materializes the objectives, principles, methods, rules and procedures governing the production and use of accounting information. The normalization process has as a reference the system accounting rules and restrictions on building the truth about the heritage situation, results and financial condition (Ristea, 1998, p.18). Referring to the normalization of the accounting process, French Professor Bemard Colasse says:" Today in most countries the accountancies of firms are normalized; this means that they rely on common rules and terminology and prepare summary documents whose models are identical for all firms" (Colasse, 1995, p.37). Paul Holt and Cherly Hein define the harmonization as a process of reducing accounting differences to the extent of standardization (Holt & Hein, 2001). Other authors consider the term "harmonization" as only the jargon used in international accounting to define the "report to reduce differences in financial reporting between countries (Walton and others, 2003). Often called the language of business, the accountancy covers, we would say inevitably, a process of harmonization that is intended to harmonize national accounting rules and practices to ensure comparability of accounting financial statements. Therefore financial resources and necessary time are saved for transnational companies to draw up consolidated accounts and financial statements.
The harmonization of accounting regulations at an international level is accompanied by indisputable economic arguments...