The Necessity of Optimizing the Financial Statement: A Grounded Theory Analysis

Companies' financial statements are a window through which one can look inside the company. People from different groups need financial statement to make different decisions. The present study seeked to examine the success of financial statements in fulfilling the mission of conveying the company's message and provide suggestions for improving this process using grounded theory. after literature review and framework determination, a semi-structured interview with university professors, accountants, auditors and stockholders began. After depth conversations with 29 people due to saturation, the theoretical sampling ended. However, new topics were also raised in the interviews, which necessitated further studies. Therefore, the data collection process was done by studying the research literature, interviewing and referring to new sources. Data analysis was based on open, axial and selective coding of Strauss and Carbin's grounded theory approach and a paradigm was formed. The Axial category is "financial statements using" which is influenced by inputs including causal conditions, contextual conditions and interfering conditions and causes strategies and outcoms. Some consequences are positive and some are negative. The need to maintain the positive consequences and provide solutions to eliminate and improve the negative consequences is obvious. finally, solutions for this type of consequences have been presented. The proposed solutions emerged in the three axes of " solving communication problem ", "financial statement design" and "standardization". Finally, a comprehensive model of financial statement use was presented, including three main components: Producer, Iinformation and User.