Banca de DEFESA: Luciana da Silva Moraes Sardeiro

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS ON THE PRIMACY OF INVESTORS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Conceptual Framework IASB - FASB. Investor Primacy. Critical Discourse Studies. Emancipatory Accounting. Public Accounting Service.

The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) had its second Conceptual Framework approved in 2010, when the standard was conducted in common agreement with the North American standard-setter Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). Several studies portray the North American influence in the definition of international standards, some of them observe that the new standard approved by the IASB – FASB, included in the main objectives the figure of primary users (investor primacy) as those to whom financial reports should be addressed. targeted, excluding users who traditionally figured in these conceptual structures. Given this, the objective of the investigation was to understand how discursive narratives are mobilized around the hierarchization/marginalization of the definition of users of accounting information in the objectives of the Conceptual Framework of the IASB – FASB (2010). The theoretical and methodological platform of Critical Discourse Studies (ECD) articulated with Emancipatory Accounting was used to achieve the proposed objectives. Furthermore, technological tools were used to support text mining and analysis in accordance with critical discursive analysis. Through the analysis of the results, it was found that the positions of the participants in the public consultation were fragmented into discursive wings with more or less democratic tendencies. However, even the less democratic wings positioned themselves with reservations regarding the inconsistencies and ambiguities in the arguments supported by the standard-setter in favor of investor primacy. There is also evidence that the positions of standard setters, regulators and auditors tend to align, which reveals the influences of professional social practices in defining individuals' social preferences. The strategies mobilized to justify the standard-setter's positions to hierarchize/marginalize go through the processes of activating social actors (investors) and passivating (other) users. The discursive socio-environmental effects emerging from the discursive analyzes are influenced by restrictions/limitations attributed to social actors and policy definitions aligned with broader social interests, such as: agency cuts; control of agendas; and restrictions on understanding the public function of accounting. The sociocultural and historical-economic context exerted influences on the configuration of standards, with processes of detraditionalization and recontextualization of the assumptions of the liberal economic matrix of thought redefined in the norm. These findings reverberate in the erosion of democratic processes and have implications for the issue of social justice, which contribute to the maintenance of the conditions that structure regimes of social inequality and limit the understanding of the public function of accounting.