A review of research performed on the approach to the subsequent measurement of goodwill

Journal of Economic and Financial Sciences

 
 
Field Value
 
Title A review of research performed on the approach to the subsequent measurement of goodwill
 
Creator Jhavary, Humnaaz Ecim, Dusan Van Zijl, Wayne
 
Subject agency theory; amortisation; depreciation; goodwill; impairment; value relevance
Description Orientation: By taking stock of goodwill accounting literature, the article identifies key themes and highlights the lack of innovation in goodwill and intangibles’ accounting evolution.Research purpose: This article suggests pure grounded theory research is required to develop a novel perspective on goodwill accounting.Motivation for the study: Little progress has been made to overcome the dated issues related to goodwill impairment necessitating a genuinely fresh approach.Research approach/design and method: A search was performed on the Scopus Database and all sources containing a combination of ‘goodwill’ and ‘impairment’, ‘amortisation’ or ‘depreciation’ in the title, abstract or keywords were extracted. A total of 231 sources from 1990 to 2022 are analysed. These are coded with the support of a content analysis and a bibliometric analysis.Main findings: This research identifies the dominance of positivist quantitative research and financial economics as a key issue that may be holding back progress on the subsequent treatment of goodwill. The research iterates three core issues, namely: (1) that the impairment-only approach allows too much managerial discretion, (2) an inability to reasonably estimate the useful life of goodwill deters many from supporting goodwill amortisation and (3) sometimes goodwill may be a wasting asset while others may genuinely have an indefinite useful life.Practical/managerial implications: This research may be relevant for standard setters when considering goodwill accounting methods.Contribution/value-add: The research provides insights into existing literature and highlights areas for future accounting research.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2024-05-03
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion —
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/jef.v17i1.928
 
Source Journal of Economic and Financial Sciences; Vol 17, No 1 (2024); 15 pages 2312-2803 1995-7076
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://jefjournal.org.za/index.php/jef/article/view/928/1785 https://jefjournal.org.za/index.php/jef/article/view/928/1786 https://jefjournal.org.za/index.php/jef/article/view/928/1787 https://jefjournal.org.za/index.php/jef/article/view/928/1788
 
Rights Copyright (c) 2024 Humnaaz Jhavary, Dusan Ecim, Wayne van Zijl https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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