The adoption of XBRL in South Africa: an empirical study
| Published date | 01 June 2012 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/02640471211241672 |
| Pages | 409-425 |
| Date | 01 June 2012 |
| Author | L.P. Steenkamp,G.F. Nel |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
The adoption of XBRL in
South Africa: an empirical study
L.P. Steenkamp and G.F. Nel
Department of Accountancy, Stellenbosch University, Matieland, South Africa
Abstract
Purpose – eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is an important new information and
communication technology for the electronic communication of business and financial data.
International research shows unacceptably low levels of awareness and adoption of XBRL. This paper
aims to investigate the level of awareness of XBRL in South Africa among chartered accountants.
Furthermore, it aims to consider the factors influencing adoption of XBRL and the impact of the
economic circumstances on the decision to adopt XBRL.
Design/methodology/approach – The research was conducted with data collected through a
structured, self-administered web-based survey sent to 11,458 chartered accountants. Chartered
accountants will be primarily responsible for the implementation of XBRL at organisations.
Findings – The findings are largely in line with international studies, indicating a low level of
awareness and slow adoption of the new technology. The major reasons cited for not adopting XBRL
are that it is not yet mandatory in South Africa to do so and in the view of the respondents there is not
any benefit in adopting XBRL. The results indicated that the economic circumstances did not have any
effect on the decision to implement XBRL, be it either to implement or not to implement XBRL.
Originality/value – It is concluded that the business case for XBRL, internationally and in South
Africa, should be made stronger for awareness and adoption rates to improve. The adoption of XBRL
is, by implication, important and relevant to everyone with an interest in information management.
Keywords Information andcommunication technologies,Information management,
Database management, Resistance tochange, Accountants, South Africa
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
In the digital age, information specialists are regularly confronted by new technologies
that will “revolutionise” the way information is retrieved, stored and managed. One
such technology that is being touted as being revolutionary is eXtensible Business
Reporting Language (XBRL). The study on which this paper is based investigated to
what extent this technology, which is specifically applicable to financial information,
has been adopted in the South African market. While it is an innovation in a very
specific area, i.e. financial information, the findings are applicable to the wider arena of
information and knowledge management, as it is one subset of information
management technology.
XBRL is technology that tags pieces of financial data, with the aim of making the
analysis and retrieval of data easier, quicker and more cost-effective. It is based on the
same principle as HTML, but is more focused in the adoption sphere, i.e. financial
reporting data by organisations. Individual pieces of financial data are backed by
metadata, which facilitates this data processing process.
According to a discussion document of the XBRL International Standards Board
(XSB), at the start of 2010 there were more than 600 member organisations of XBRL
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
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The adoption of
XBRL
409
Received November 2010
Revised January 2011
April 2011
Accepted April 2011
The Electronic Library
Vol. 30 No. 3, 2012
pp. 409-425
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0264-0473
DOI 10.1108/02640471211241672
worldwide. This included companies, regulatory bodies, accounting standard setters,
accounting firms and software companies (XSB, 2010, p. 7). While this might appear to
be an indication of a big uptake of this new technology, it should be borne in mind that
the first version of XBRL was already launched in April 2000, and the version
currently in use was launched in 2003 (XSB, 2010, p. 6).
Internationally the drive for the adoption of XBRL has come, in many instances,
from regulatory bodies, for example in the US the Securities and Exchange
Commission has made XBRL filings mandatory from 2011 (Securities and Exchange
Commission, 2009). In South Africa, filings using XBRL are not mandatory, and the
adoption of XBRL is therefore largely voluntary. This situation provides the chance to
investigate the adoption of XBRL without the interference of legislative effects. This
study adds to the limited literature (Rawashdeh, 2010) on XBRL adoption. Given the
slow uptake of XBRL (adopted by only 36 per cent of companies in the US to date), this
study should be valuable in driving future actions to improve the adoption rate of
XBRL. In a wider context it adds to the literature on innovation adoption in general.
More specifically, it investigates the phenomenon of resistance to change. Considering
the many stated benefits of this new technology, it appears that it is possible that
resistance to change is preventing implementation and that the solution would
possibly be enforcement through legislation.
The remainder of the article is structured as follows: in the next section a brief
overview of XBRL is provided, together with a discussion of the relevant literature on
technology adoption. Thereafter, a description of the research methodology follows,
with the results in the subsequent section.
2. Background on XBRL
XBRL is the result of the evolution of protocols, with its origin in HTML and XML.
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is a well-known markup language that was
developed to displaydata or text on websites. To specify the formatting of text, the text
would have “tags” indicating the desired formatting – for example ,b.bold ,/b .
would display as bold, with the tags between the ,and .signs.
eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is a more advanced markup language than
HTML. HTML describes the data and says whatthe data are. Thus, instead of a number
just being a number, XML indicates what that number is; say, a debtor figure or
employee number. It therefore adds meaning to data, aiding in the efficient processing
thereof by computer software. It does this by adding “tags” to the data, again contained
in ,and .signs. If an employee number is formatted in the XML format, it might
resemble the following: ,EmployeeNo .123456 ,/EmployeeNo .. These data are
therefore identifiable by the software as not only text, but text in a specific context; say,
an employee number.
An important part of XML is that it is “extensible”, meaning that users or
companies can define their own tags. Different organisations might therefore use,
define or allocate tags differently. Hence users from different organisations cannot
necessarily make use of tagged data from another organisation. In the above example
of the employee number, another company may make use of the tag ,EmplNo .,
which would render the tag useless when used outside the specific organisation
(Bagranoff et al., 2008, p. 379; Dykes and Tittel, 2005).
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