“No comment”: Language frictions and the IASB's due process

Abstract

The IASB asserts that global stakeholder participation in the standard-setting process is critical for developing and maintaining high-quality accounting standards. However, the myriad languages used in countries that apply IFRS may impede this participation. We find that the IASB is less likely to receive comment letters from stakeholders in countries with languages that are linguistically distant from English. We also find that comment letters from more linguistically distant stakeholders are less likely to be quoted in IASB staff-prepared comment letter summaries, suggesting that they have less influence in the redeliberation process. Path analyses show that this result arises from language frictions being associated with reduced writing quality and originality. We also find that language frictions prevent participation in other standard-setting communication channels. Collectively, language frictions appear to impede the IASB's efforts to equitably obtain and consider valuable global feedback.