A Bibliometric Analysis of the Academic Literature on the Convergence to the IFRS

Abstract

The adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) has been a world wide process, and the political characteristics and implications of this process have been analysed in the academic literature. In this paper we conduct a bibliometric analysis of papers about the convergence to the IFRS. Using Scopus as our data source, we identified 644 articles which dealt with this subject. Our results evidence that the interest on the subject has steadily increased over the years, and that the production of these articles is quite dispersed in terms of either authorship, journals, or countries. However, Lotka's law of the concentration of productivity among authors applies to our sample, since the authors identified as the most productive, corresponding to 16.4% of the total, account for 51.2% of the articles. Bradford's law of the concentration among journals also applies to our sample, with 11 out of the 182 journals of our sample accounting for nearly a third of the articles. We complemented these analyses by reading the abstracts of three subsets from our sample: the most cited articles, those published in interpretive/critical journals, and those with authors affiliated to Brazilian institutions. Through this reading we classified and compared their approach, topic, and methodology, evidencing that the most cited articles are characterised by a behavioural/positivist approach, a methodology of archival research and a broad range of topics, whereas the articles published in interpretive/critical journals are more likely to take a sociological/organisational approach, a methodology of case study, and a focus on accounting regulation. The articles from authors affiliated to Brazilian institutions, although more diverse, present a noticeable alignment to the mainstream. Combining these two analyses, we claim that bibliometric indicators are useful when properly contextualised and accompanied by a substantive engagement with the relevant literature.