The Impact of a User Orientation on Financial Accounting Theory and Research

The goal of accounting should be viewed as communication. The supply of information to all parties with an interest in the operations of a specific enterprise is the communication process. The information is communicated to interested parties by the financial statements. This issue began to take a more prominent role in the late 1960s in both research and important theoretically oriented monographs and pronouncements. User needs and objectives became an important connecting link among these documents, many of which were attempting to create a solid theoretical foundation for financial accountingstandards. This paper examines chronologically the important committee reports and documents that gave rise to objectives and standards. The importance of decision-making has been focused time and definitions of accounting. Therefore, this study researches how users of accounting information make decisions. In studying the decisions that users make, and the impact those decisions have on the provision of information accounting theorists have adopted some approaches. No accounting theories or research methods have been able to provide conclusive evidence that a single alternative is socially superior to all others. Accounting theories and accounting research, therefore, can contribute to policymaking, but only as one of much economic and social consideration