On Procedural Justice Of Accounting

Social justice and fairness are the eternal pursuit of mankind.

Accounting equity focuses on the distribution of interests, while accounting justice focuses on value evaluation.

Because justice is the foundation of social justice and fairness, I use accounting justice instead of accounting fairness.

At present, the accounting profession in China has analyzed the accounting injustice represented by accounting fraud and its consequences.

Based on the concept of procedural justice, the author intends to discuss entity accounting and procedural accounting from the perspective of accounting procedural justice.

What is accounting procedural justice? Before discussing what is accounting procedure justice, it is necessary to understand what is justice and fairness in general sense.

From the early peasant uprising, the idea of "waiting for the rich and the poor", and the idea of "natural rights" advocated by the capitalist Enlightenment era and the "just justice" advocated by contemporary scholar Rawls, regarded justice and fairness as the first value of the society.

If there is no social justice and fairness, people will feel that they are in an uncertain environment, and when the interests that are expected to be obtained will not be guaranteed, it is bound to pursue the realization of short-term interests through the short-term action, so that the whole society is in a more unstable state.

In the history of mankind, in order to achieve social justice and fairness, it has experienced extreme violent disasters, including blood revenge, tribal fighting, and so on.

Obviously, the use of extreme violence means that even the realization of social justice and fairness is very expensive.

In modern times, especially after entering the civil society, people gradually realized that the realization of justice and fairness in substance should be realized through procedural justice.

In the modern civil society that has established the rule of law order, procedural justice has priority over entity justice.

According to the criterion of fairness, fairness can be divided into result (entity) fairness and procedural (procedural) fairness.

Results the equity theory holds that as long as the results reflect the rights enjoyed by the people, equal protection and the obligation to be carried out are carried out fairly, the result is justice and fairness, so it is acceptable, regardless of the procedure to produce such results.

In addition, the theory also considers that procedure is not important, and that procedure is merely a means or tool to serve the outcome.

On the contrary, procedural justice emphasizes procedural justice rather than fairness in the outcome itself.

Because the result is always the result of a certain procedure, so as long as the procedure is fair, the result is fair and acceptable.

The entity is a concept corresponding to the procedure.

The entity generally refers to the stipulation of the nature and attribute of things, that is, qualitative stipulation.

Relative to the entity, the procedure refers to the stipulation of the external characteristic attribute level of the thing, namely the quantity stipulation.

The two is the relationship between quality and quantity.

For example, the relationship between legislative power (entity) and rules of procedure (procedure), accounting results and accounting process is the embodiment of substantive and procedural relationship.

The concept of entity and procedure is not only widely applied in the field of law, but also quite successful.

There are substantive law and procedural law in law.

Taniguchi Yasuhira, a Japanese legal scholar, pointed out: "law is generally divided into substantive law and procedural law. Substantive law refers to the rule of" substantive justice "from the perspective of common sense, and the procedural law is understood as a practical norm of legal content.

In the field of economics, Professor Simon puts forward the theory of "bounded rationality", which further distinguishes human rationality from procedural rationality and substantive rationality.

That is, procedural rationality emphasizes process rationality rather than consequence rationality, while entity rationality emphasizes that the result conforms to a certain value criterion and does not care about the process itself.

In the field of accounting, Ishiri Yuji, an accountant, not only distinguished the accounting process and accounting results, but also emphasized that the process of accounting is as important as its results.

Xie Deren believes that the concept of procedure plays an important role in the accounting field.

He pointed out: "when people negotiate and make contractual arrangements for the accounting rules making power, people are really concerned that this arrangement is made according to the decision rules and procedures that everyone can accept, which is a rational thought of procedure."

And predicted: "in the process of improving accounting information authenticity in the world, the pursuit of rational result will promote the rational evolution of procedures, and the improvement of procedural rationality will help achieve the realization of rational results.

Perhaps, the truthfulness of accounting information can lay a foundation in the concept of "procedural rationality is the main reason, and the result is complementary, and the two promote each other".

Xie Deren also said: "according to the concept of procedural rationality, accounting emphasizes the rationality of accounting procedures such as accounting recognition, measurement, recording and reporting, especially in procedures.

Therefore, the authenticity of accounting information is not reflected in how real it is, but whether it is processed according to the recognized accounting rules and its contractual arrangements in the country, if it is "real".

Yan Da five and Li Yong think: "under the premise of" limited rationality ", we should focus on procedural rationality and strengthen the examination of" control "in the process of behavior. As long as the procedure is reasonable and the process is standardized, the result rationality is the inevitable result of procedural rationality, instead of deliberate pursuit of result rationality and inversion.

Qiu Zongshun, Han Hongling and others hold that the accounting procedures should be followed in the formulation of accounting standards.

A set of complete, strict, sufficient and stable procedures adopted by the British and American families in the accounting standards setting is a typical embodiment of the concept of procedural justice, a pplant to the legal practice of procedural fairness, and the theory of procedural justice is the rationale for the use of the permitted procedures in the formulation of accounting standards.

So, what kind of "procedure" should be set up and used to get the result fairly?

Or what kind of "results" can be obtained?

When conflicts between procedural justice and substantive justice occur, we must choose substantive justice and sacrifice procedural justice. This is what we call "emphasizing reality and neglecting procedure", while we prefer to sacrifice substantive justice and insist on procedural justice, which is the idea of procedural justice.

The reason why I accept the concept of procedural justice is that the standard of procedural justice is relatively definite, absolute and easy to follow, while the pursuit of substantive justice is the result justice, which is uncertain and relative.

Obviously, the procedure has its independent value which cannot be neglected.

In this sense, procedural justice has priority over the value of entity justice, so it is very important to choose and apply what kind of procedure.

Although the public's dissatisfaction with accounting fraud is caused by the injustice of accounting results, the fairness of accounting results is difficult to measure and evaluate. Therefore, the judgment of the fairness of accounting results can only be judged by the just standard of accounting procedure.

As long as the accounting procedure used is just, that is, the same accounting items will be used in the same accounting procedure, the same accounting results will be obtained.

Only in this way can people feel that the accounting results are fair.

In order to ensure the realization of the fairness of accounting procedures, the accounting profession and the whole society need to establish the concept of procedural supremacy, value neutrality, positive omission and the creation and application of accounting in order to ensure the realization of the fairness of accounting procedures. Two.

1. procedure is paramount.

To establish the concept of procedural supremacy, we must first answer whether the procedure has any value.

What exactly is the value of procedure?

In particular, is the procedure independent of the value of the entity?

In order to answer these questions, I might as well borrow Rawls's famous philosopher and political scientist's exposition of the value of procedure in his painstaking work, the theory of justice.

Rawls divided procedural justice into three categories: the first one is pure procedural justice, which means that there is no independent entity justice standard outside the procedure.

For gambling, there is no independent standard for determining the outcome of justice outside the gambling process. As long as the gambling procedure is fair, the result is fair.

So in this case, procedural justice determines substantive justice.

In many cases, people are willing to adopt a "lot to draw" way to make certain decisions, which includes the concept of simple justice which achieves justice through procedural justice.

The second one is complete procedural justice, which means that there is an independent entity justice standard outside the procedure, but a fair procedure must be set up to ensure the fairness of the entity.

For example, it is a fair procedure to cut cake by setting "cake after cake cutting", instead of using the exact measurement to cut the cake equal to the standard of entity justice.

The third one is incomplete procedural justice, which means that there is still a standard of substantive justice outside the procedure, but no matter what kind of procedure is set up, it can not fully realize substantive justice.

For instance, although there are substantive justice standards and procedural justice standards, no matter what procedures are set up, it is impossible to ensure that every case can be given a substantive and fair judgment, because even if the procedure is followed strictly, there may be a wrong case.

Although there is an absolute standard for judging whether a person is a real criminal, no one can get the absolute standard of understanding except the omnipotent God. Therefore, in practice, there is no real compromise between cake and cake, that is, only procedural justice, and the result is natural and fair.

Therefore, in incomplete procedural justice, the procedure still has its independent value.

In addition, many countries in the world adopt the "three instance trial" method in the trial practice, while the three trial is often only a legal review, that is, only to examine whether the applicable law of the original court is legitimate in procedure and no longer examine the facts of the case.

From the perspective of judicial practice in China, the independent value of procedure has become increasingly prominent, and the case of Lu Jiahao, an independent director, fully illustrates this point.

In September 27, 2001, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) punished Zheng Baiwen, a listed company, for issuing and fabricating false accounting information. The chairman Li Fuqian and Vice Chairman Lu Yi De were fined 300 thousand yuan and 200 thousand yuan respectively, and 10 directors of Lu Jia Hao were fined 100 thousand yuan.

Lu Jiahao refused to accept the case and filed a lawsuit against the court. The court of first instance and the court of Final Appeal dismissed Lu Jia Hao's lawsuit on the grounds that the lawsuit exceeded the statutory time limit.

In Lu Jia Hao's litigation cases, the court of first instance and the court of second instance did not make substantive judgments on the case. Instead, they decided to dismiss the party's proceedings on the grounds of procedural lawsuits.

In the field of accounting, accounting assumption is part of the efforts made by people to achieve accounting procedures and reduce the standard of value judgment.

From the four basic assumptions, the assumption of accounting entity determines that the enterprise subject is the sole criterion of accounting entity, thus resolving the problem of undivided accounting between enterprises and owners. The assumption of continuous operation determines the criteria for enterprises to continue to operate, thus solving the problem of uncertainty in the operation of enterprises. The assumption of accounting period determines the unified accounting reporting deadline of enterprises, thus resolving the confusion caused by multiple accounting units. Although there are different accounting periods, the annual accounting unit has become the mainstream.

Of course, the formulation and application of accrual basis, implementation principle and historical cost principle all try to reduce the confusion caused by human judgment (although accounting standards actually fail to achieve this, there are still contradictions).

Procedural accounting pursues the impartiality of accounting process. As long as we strictly establish and follow the pre-set accounting procedure, we can achieve the result of accounting justice.

Accounting procedure is the process of generating accounting results, and accounting results are the result of accounting procedures.

Accounting procedure justice is the starting point of accounting result fairness, and accounting result fairness is the product of accounting procedure justice.

Therefore, only by realizing the impartiality of accounting procedures can we minimize the ambiguity and selectivity of accounting standards in practical work and the possible effects of subjective and man-made uncertainties on the results of financial reporting, thereby enhancing the objectivity of accounting work and the comparability of accounting information.

It is undeniable that the pursuit of fairness in accounting procedures has been reflected in the formulation, promulgation and implementation of accounting regulations, accounting standards and accounting systems.

2. is neutral in value.

Value neutrality is a concept put forward by Webb, a German sociologist.

Webb believes that value neutrality can not exclude the value of social science completely, but he believes that in the course of research, empirical facts and value judgments can be distinguished, that is, value neutrality is not only necessary but also possible.