Intranational and international consensus on the importance of disclosure items in financial reports: A Nigerian case study

Abstract

Implicit in the publication of general-purpose external financial statements by domestic and multinational enterprises and in the increasing interest in international accounting harmonization and standardization is the belief that the information needs of users are similar on the national and international scenes. A number of research studies have investigated the existence (or non-existence) of a consensus on the needs of different users within a nation and cross-nationally but no study has been reported on the needs of users of financial reports in developing countries. There is, however, much a priori discussion of the apparent differences between the needs of users in this group of countries and those of users in the western industrialized countries. This paper reports the result of a test of two hypotheses on the similarity of information needs of different users of financial reports in Nigeria among themselves and with the needs of similar users in some developed countries.