In fact, the role of the developed regulations was not entirely to improve financial reporting and disclosure in Egypt, but also to serve other social and political objectives that were deemed important by the Egyptian regulators during the transitional processes. Egypt has had to remove, or as Oliver (1992) argues "DE-institutionalize" the inherited socialist social political and legal states and at the same time comping with international capital markets requirements in order to participate in the global economy and secure a continuous follow of foreign investment funds.
the empirical findings suggest two intertwined facts. First the responsibility for setting accounting standard has been torn between the ECM the CAA and the Egyptian accounting profession where each has developed a different description of the EFRR yet similar to the IASs. second as a result of this fragmentation, three description of accounting regulations have engineered and provided three different levels of harmonization ranging from a complete adoption of the IASs without modification to and adoption accompanied by different modifications.
Although the existence of the three descriptions have helped to incorporate variations in the Egyptian cultural, social political legal and economic stated that are in transition, they have contributed to the avoidance of adopting the IASs, or as catheters (1995) argues became loosely coupled allowing businesses managers the discretion to choose the suitable description for their desires though not necessarily conforming with the IASs framework. the way in which the IASs are used at the micro organizational level represents an area of further research and is beyond the scope of the current paper.
Although the regulators HAVE ACTED UPON THE new regulations to achieve certain social and political targets they also have personal desires in terms of legitimating their position as well as their roles in developing accounting regulations. one of the interviewees mentioned the following.
in my opinion it would be much better to assign the responsibility of setting accounting standards to the prime minister. there are some disputes among the CAA,the ECM and the accounting profession. for example the CAA chairman is nit divined with the enforcement of the ECM description of the accounting standards and vice versa these conflicts can only be resolved through the prime ministry authority whereby both institutions will have to comply (professional accountant Member of ECM and CAA - interviewee 4).
Another professional accountant expressed the following opinion:
in order to avoid any dispute, egypr has to have a separate independent institution responsible for developing accounting standards instead of purring such a responsibility on the hands of a fragile profession and ministerial decrees (interviewee 2).