午夜剧场

My field of expertise is financial accounting, which is one of the mechanisms for resolving information asymmetry in securities markets. Accounting is often called the language of business, and at one time, it was hailed as one of the "Three Sacred Treasures" of business, along with IT and English. Whether or not these are truly "sacred treasures," they all share the commonality of being means of information transmission that had to be standardized as the exchange of information became internationalized.

In order to transmit information across borders—whether they be countries, companies, or villages—it is necessary to standardize the means of communication. The most obvious example is English, a natural language that currently functions as the world's standard language. Regarding IT, to use a familiar example, a document created in Word can be exchanged across borders and opened or manipulated on a local computer.

What about accounting? Accounting information, which is the language used to communicate a company's performance to external stakeholders, is generated by applying a tool called "double-entry bookkeeping" according to rules known as "accounting standards." While the system of double-entry bookkeeping itself has been a standardized tool worldwide for a long time, its operational rules originally developed as social norms based on the commercial customs of specific countries and regions. However, with the internationalization of securities markets, the trend over the past 40 years has been that operational rules must be standardized to make accounting information from around the world comparable. To this end, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has been struggling with the goal of establishing a "single set" of accounting standards to be used worldwide, but it is difficult to say that this has been successful.

Imagine if you could only use English to express things. Furthermore, these days, Microsoft Office and LINE are often used as defaults in a way that allows for no alternatives; what would happen if those systems were to collapse for some reason?

By drawing analogies to natural language and IT, we can learn much about the harmful effects of using a single-set means of information transmission. Being aware of the drawbacks of single-set specifications is not limited to accounting; it could also provide clues for solutions to numerous problems in fields such as education—including entrance exams and organizational performance evaluation—and management.