however it is only recently that some consensus has emerged in the cross-country comparative accounting literature in respect of a two-fold hierarchical classification between accounting practices where a general characterization has been made between micro-anglo saxon and macro-continental practices,which was originally proposed by nobes(1983) and has more recently been applied by beattie and jones (2001) on the use of financial graphs in annual reports in six country study of australia,france,germany,netherlajd,uk and us