Studying Islamic Accounting: Emphasis on Objectives, Characteristics, Users and Social & Religious Oriented Information

Despite the relationship between religion and accounting, in traditional accounting literature this relationship has been considered not enough. Traditionally, religion has had a role in shaping and enforcing ethical behaviors such as truthfulness, honesty and justice. A community in which such values are paramount may be marked by a high degree of trust in business dealings and financial affairs. This research attempts to consider the role of religion in developing and implementing accounting theory. With regard to this aim, it is tried to study the academician's viewpoint toward Islamic accounting. The research population was the academicians from Tehran, Hamedan, Kermanshah and Kordistan provinces who were familiar with Islamic concepts. Using Morgan’s table, 44 people were selected as sample size. The needed data was collected through questionnaire. In the process of data analysis, reliability and normality tests, chi-square test, one-sample t test and non-parametric sign test were used. SPSS software was used to do these tests. The research findings showed that a) the objective of Islamic accounting is different from the objective of conventional accounting, which is decision usefulness. b) the level of importance of users of accounting information is different between Islamic accounting and conventional accounting, whereby in Islamic accounting the shareholder is not necessarily the most important user among the stakeholders. And c) Islamic accounting should emphasize social and religious oriented information.