Stewardship and the Objectives of Financial Statements: A Comment on IASB's Preliminary Views on an Improved Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting: The Objective of Financial Reporting and Qualitative Characteristics of Decision-Useful Financial Reporting Information1

Abstract

This paper examines the question of whether the objective of financial reporting should be based solely on ‘decision-usefulness’ or whether stewardship should be recognised as a separate objective. This question is not new, but has recently come to the fore through the publication by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) of their ‘Preliminary Views’ (PV) paper setting out a draft of the first chapters of their proposed improved conceptual framework. The PV paper proposes a decision-useful objective, and argues that information relevant to assessing stewardship will be encompassed in that objective. However, two IASB members have set out an ‘Alternative View’ which argues that stewardship and decision-usefulness are parallel objectives with different emphases that should therefore be defined as separate objectives. The present paper argues that, as suggested by the Alternative View, stewardship contributes an important dimension to financial reporting, which should be reflected by specific acknowledgement in the objectives of financial reporting. However, it suggests that stewardship should not be characterised simply as information to assist an assessment of the competence and integrity of ‘stewards’ (i.e. management, directors) but as the provision of information that provides a foundation for a constructive dialogue between management and shareholders. Seen in this way, stewardship provides a direct support for many of the propositions advanced in the PV paper. For example, it highlights the importance of historical information and that information should be complete. It would, however, be easier to make a compelling case for this information if a major role for stewardship were identified in the framework, rather than being placed merely in a supporting role. But other consequences would also follow. Exclusive focus on a decision-usefulness objective has led to an excessive emphasis on the forecasting of future cash flows, and insufficient emphasis on reliability, which seems to be an essential qualitative characteristic of financial statements. The substitution of ‘verifiability’, as proposed by the PV paper, is not adequate. There is no conflict between decision-useful and stewardship objectives, since the information required to meet the objective of stewardship is required by decision-usefulness: however, the exclusion of stewardship incurs the risk that those who argue for the inclusion of information required for an assessment of stewardship will be placed at a disadvantage. They will have to frame their arguments in an indirect and convoluted way, and it is accordingly unlikely that they will always succeed. So accounting standards might permit the exclusion of information, or the presentation of information in a suboptimal way, whilst superior alternatives could be compellingly supported by appeal to an explicit objective of stewardship.