Icke-vinstdrivande organisationers redovisningsval : Vilka faktorer har påverkat bostadsrättsföreningars val av K-regelverk?

In science, there is a large amount of literature that explainswhy companies choose an accounting method over another. The problem is that this literature mainly explains profit organizations' accounting choices while non-profit organizations remains in the background. There are several categories of non-profit organizations, all of which are characterized by specific properties. The changes that have taken place within Swedish accounting have opened up the opportunity to examine one of these categories, namely housing associations. Prior to fiscal year 2014 the Swedish housing associations faced a problematic accounting choice where they had to choose between two sets of rules; K2 and K3, which is not adapted to their type of operation. The purpose of this study is thus to contribute to the understanding of what affects non-profit organizations' accounting choice, by explaining what influenced housing associations choice between K2 and K3. To achieve this, positive accounting theory, institutional theory and stakeholder theory was used. The study was conducted using a quantitative methodology based on a survey. The survey was answered by 228 housing associations and the answers were analyzed with descriptive statistics, t-test, anova and regression analysis. The result shows that it is mainly stakeholders that affect housing associations accounting choice, especially the profession of accounting. Financial and administrative factors affect this organizations accounting choices as well, but not as much. The housing as sociations who choose a principle-based accounting standard tend to be more affected by financial factors, while those who choose a rule-based accounting standard tend to be more affected by administrative factors. Furthermore, it appears that the housing associations whose accounts are handled by niche financial managers have been more affected by the accounting profession than housing associations whose accounts are managed by accounting firms. Based on the results, it was also seen that housing associations final accounting choices vary depending on which cooperative they belong to. Based on the results above, the conclusion is drawn that non-profit organizations' accounting choices are multifaceted and can be affected by various factors and circumstances.Validerat; 20150826 (global_studentproject_submitter