Readability of accountants’ communications with small business—Some Australian evidence

Abstract

This paper explores the readability of a new and non-corporate narrative area, accountants’ communications with small business. The distinctive motivations, agendas and interests of small business managers are considered. The findings are informed by rationales from Shearer’s (2002) thesis on the influence of neoclassical economics on accounting discourse. The study finds low readability accentuated by potentially low reader interest with accounting documents composed according to conventional accounting’s rules and statutory requirements. Higher readability and document content which informs small business managers’ interests is evident when accountants are not compelled to author documents with reference to these professional rules and legislation.

Keywords:

• Small business
• Accounting
• Readability
• Information interests

Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges the guidance and helpful comments of Associate Professor Glen Lehman, the editor of Accounting Forum, Professor Lee Parker, Professor John Courtis and two anonymous referees which greatly improved the paper.

Notes

1 Year dates (such as 2008) and initials were treated as one word. Hyphenated words were treated as two or more words unless grammatical conventions required that they be treated as one word (for instance, co-operate was treated as one word whereas owner-manager was treated as two words). Apostrophes were not included in word length unless they influenced the meaning of a word (for example, company’s is treated as an eight-letter word). Names of persons and business names were deleted and substituted with an equivalent number of words (Smith & Taffler, 1992, p. 94).