Exploring the Relationships Between Corporate Identity Trust and Accounting Information

Abstract

Conventional economic theory has tended to disregard the notion of trust. Economic actors are assumed to be guided solely by their self-interest, unmindful of the social bases of their existence. However, current research of real life business relationships has turned trust into an increasingly popular scholarly concept. Companies need trust in their business relationships while continually adapting to changes in their environment, as much as they need accounting information. Under these circumstances it is of significance to explore the relationships between corporate identity, trust, and accounting information. Therefore the following research questions are raised: Besides the factors of finance and revenues, why do we need trust from the environment in order to get, maintain or change identity of a company? What role does accounting information play in this context? In order to take a first step to answer these questions a literature survey based on two databases from EBSCO and ABI of the school library in Göteborg School of Economics and Commercial Law has been conducted, exploring the relationships between the three concepts of corporate identity, trust, and accounting information.

In the first section of the thesis, there is a brief description of each of the three concepts. The following section contains a discussion about methodology, followed by another section, where 17 articles selected from the two databases depending on the keywords are presented. In the following analysis, it is revealed that if any relationships between the three concepts exist, they have not been covered yet by research, or perhaps researchers haven't been searching for the relationships. Nevertheless, the thesis argues that there is no universal definition of the three concepts, a corporate is regarded as a continual discourse that helps people to be consistent with the changing environment, and trust is unconditional in business relationships. Trust from companies can earn trust from the society, which can provide companies with more financial resources. Managers in companies need accounting information to know their companies' past, now, and future. And so does society. In order to achieve, maintain and change the corporate identity, trust and accounting information are playing an important role.