The Impact Research Of The Informal Institution On The Implementation Of Small Enterprises’ Accounting System

At present, small enterprises have become an indispensable and most important part of the vitality enterprise groups in the China’s national economy system, and they are playing an irreplaceable role in flourishing the markets, creating jobs, technical innovation, promote industrial upgrading, developing economy and other areas. However, the accounting practice of small enterprises is not standard and their accounting information is of low qualities, which are seriously hindering the healthy development of small enterprises. In order to further standardize the accounting practices of small enterprises, the Ministry of Finance issued in2004,"Small Enterprises’ Accounting System", and requested implementation of small businesses nationwide since January1,2005."Small Enterprises’ Accounting System" considered the features of small enterprises and the users’ needs of their accounting information well. Compared to "enterprise accounting system", it was simplified and reduced the accounting judgments, which can be said it was tailored for small businesses. Thus the effects are not quite satisfying after few years’ implantation, and we have to think deeply about the problem that why a good system can’t be effective implemented?The Institutional Economics tell us that we should consider not only the perfection of the system itself, but also the arrangements of other relevant institutional (including formal and informal institutions) when every system is implemented. Most of the existing literatures concentrate on the formal system causes and the concern about the informal system causes is not enough. This paper found that China is not short of the formal systems to regulate small enterprises currently and the main question is that those formal systems can not be implemented. Because the informal system control the most choices human behavior, and this paper decided to explore the negative impact of the informal system such as the cultural traditions, customs and ideology on the implementation of "Small Enterprises’ Accounting System".This study found that the traditional family culture, the Confucian tradition of non-rational rule of man, the inertia of wanted stability and psychological fear of change, the habit of doing things step by step, the formalist work style, the inertia of the pursuit of strong demand for large, the lack of accounting integrity and the inertia of totalitarian all has impact on the implementation of "Small Enterprises’Accounting System" at different levels. Finally, we suggest that we should not only concern about the building of formal systems, but also should pay attention to the building of informal systems, such as training the owners of small enterprises, making culture innovation, strengthening legal awareness building and accounting ethics education, combing legal regulation and industry self-regulation, changing ideas of government and the public quickly.