Accounting Practices of Multinational Companies
Ahmed Awad Rawdhan
Abstract
This paper aims to review the available literature on the accounting practices of multinational companies. In order to do this, open-source articles from Google Scholar were used. An attempt was made to select studies spanning several decades so as to analyse the trends in accounting practices over the years and especially following increased globalisation of economies across the world. Using specific criteria, approximately 500 scholarly works were initially analysed and then reduced to a smaller number which were then explored in detail. It was found that in the case of multinational companies, accounting practices have had to adapt to local norms and cultures. National economic, social, political, cultural and legal considerations make it difficult for the adoption of a universal and global accounting system that would impose standardisation and ensure uniformity across multinational companies. The push, therefore, has been in favour of harmonisation, which has allowed for flexibility as well as uniformity. This has been met with success as compared to previous attempts at global standardisation.