The overall objective of an International Accounting Standard is to contribute to the understanding of international standardization of financial accounting. This standardization would result in an increased cross border comparability of financial accounting information. More specifically, the objective is to investigate the processes of international accounting standard setting in order to learn more about the existence and nature of factors and forces promoting and impeding these processes.
             The primary reason for having accounting standards is to promote comparability and consistency. Information about a particular enterprise gains greatly in usefulness if it can be compared with similar information about other enterprises and with similar information about the same enterprise for some other period or point in time. Existing organizations, whether national or international, are challenged to continually assess the relevance of their objectives, structures, and processes in the context of the international system of the future.
             Two competing entities govern the accounting standard. In the United States there is GAAP, and the rest of the world uses the IASB (International Accounting Standards Board). Both are
             very dissimilar in their primary focus, the IASB is very focused globally, whereas GAAP is more nationalistic. The charters of both state their position very clearly. The objectives of the IASB are to develop a single set of high quality, understandable and enforceable global accounting standards. These standards require high quality, transparent and comparable information in financial statements. They need to promote the use and rigorous application of those standards. Lastly, it is to bring about a convergence of national accounting standards and international accounting standards to high quality solutions. GAAP's charter is more focused on U.S. interests. Their charter states that they are the uniform minimu...