REALITAS REFERENSIAL LABA AKUNTANSI SEBAGAI REFLEKSI KANDUNGAN INFORMASI
(Studi Interpretif-Kritis Pada Komunitas Akuntan dan Non-Akuntan)
AKHMAD RIDUWAN
Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Ekonomi Indonesia (STIESIA) Surabaya
ABSTRACT
The main aim of the research is to understand the interpretation of accounting earnings by accountants and non-accountants, and its underlied accounting concepts. This research is motivated by the fact that accounting earnings is one of many simbols in the financial statements used to representing certain reality in the communication space. Equality of accounting earning interpretation in that communication space will determine the communication effectivity. Based on hermeneutics, or particularly named as an interpretive approach, the result of this research gives an understanding that accounting earnings are differently interpreted by accountants and non-accountants.
In the accountants’ interpretation frame, accounting earnings are the signifier of enterprises’ economic reality changes, should not signify by the net cash inflows in the reporting period. However, in the non-accountants’ interpretation frame, the reality represented by accounting earnings sign is not clear: is that an economic reality, financial reality, or accounting reality, so that usefulness of accounting earnings information in decision making is low. Analogically, in the perspective of non-accountants, accounting earnings are not differ with the reality reflected from the cracked mirror. Nevertheless, in the everyday accounting practice, non accountants still accepted and used the accounting earnings information calculated based on the accounting and financial reporting standards. Implications of this research are the rising of the needs for: (a) decomposite of accounting and financial reporting standards that useful to accomodate the ”habitus” difference between accountants and non-accountants; (b) eliminate the hegemony in accounting practice; and (c) reasking of the meaning of ”generally accepted accounting principles”.
Key-Words: Accounting Earnings, Refferential Reality, Information Contents, Interpretation, Communication, Hegemony, Decomposition.
Background of Research
Accounting is the language of the company’s technical. Accounting is the text that became the media of communication of financial information between managers and parties outside the firm, when managers do not have the opportunity to communicate directly via Wi-way. Ray J. Chambers states that accounting is a written language that serves as a substitute for speech language, and argues that the communication aspect of the accountant-it should be the basis in the development of accounting theory (see Lee 1982, 152).
Chambers recognition that accounting is the technical language of the company, obtain the response and the positive support from the profession and accounting academics (eg Li 1972; Lusk 1973, Ijiri 1975; Heath 1987; Fiol 1989; Fischer and Stoken 2001; and Suwardjono 2005, 28). Ijiri (1975, 23) provided support by stating that in addition to closely related to the measurement problem, accounting also closely related to communication problems, so that no matter how effective the process measurements made in the accounting, the resulting information will be less useful if not communicated properly.
(Simposium Nasional Akuntansi 11)
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