7.7 Adoption incentives
The seventh issue is identifying the incentives for corporations to adopt XBRL from the perspective of the economics – based voluntary disclosure literature and market – based research paradigms. What will be the characteristics of the early adopters of XBRL? Some on the XBRL Steering Committee believe that the motivation to adopt XBRL will be external. For example, a bank may offer to reduce loan interest if a company applies for its loan electronically using a standard format, such as XBRL. Financial analysts may look more favorably on companies that provide XBRL financial statement, thereby reducing the mechanical aspects of their job. Even more optimistically, capital markets as a whole will look more favorably on companies providing XBRL financial statement, thereby reducing the companie’s cost of capital. The theories and research approaches of the voluntary disclosure literature can be applied to these question.
7.8 Global adoption
The eighth and related question is the adoption of XBRL by corporations globally. The internationally inclusive approach of the XBRL initiative means that there is an opening for global reporting of accounting information, if not under globally accounting standards. Understanding the mechanisms of internationalization of accounting information dissemination and the treatment of common elements under the various GAAPs recognized by XBRL will present major challenges to developing interoperable XBRL taxonomies and provides interesting research opportunities.
7.9 Formal ontologies
Ninth and arguably most important area of research is the need to understand and develop formal ontologies of accounting as a foundation for the practical implementation of structures of accounting knowledge in XBRL (Wand and Wang, 1996; Guarino and Poli, 1995; Guarino, 1995; Gruber, 1995). The XBRL specification has been developed in a relatively informal fashion by adopting current reporting paradigms. There was no formal ontology construction. Yet , it is clear that robust ontologies, and XBRL is an ontology, require more formal mechanisms for long – term success.