Executives and accountants
There is often a discord between executives and accountants as to what are acceptable and
what are unacceptable accounting methods, because the latter prefer a priori cost
reduction, and the former have a need for a more ‘‘aggressive’’ type of reporting, more
favorably depicting the financial standing of a corporation, to make the company appear
more reliable when granting loans or concluding long-term contracts. The difference is that
executives are expected to be able to handle uncertainties and take risks, whereas the
accountants’ job is to avoid risks. Selection of an accounting method or ‘‘cooking the
figures’’ is too important a decision to be left to the accountants alone. The executives are the
people familiar with the business strategy and corporate policy as a whole and with the
attendant circumstances affecting the business, and this, Tracey (1994) holds decisively, is
where their responsibility for the ‘‘form’’ of a financial report comes from.