Khadijeh Khoadabakhshi Parijan - Research scholar in Accounting, DOS in B.N.Bahadur Institute of Management Sciences, Manasagangotri, University of Mysore, Mysore, Karnataka, India,.

Financial reporting has become the most important medium of information dissemination to be used by the users. However, this dissemination process has become complicated from the viewpoint of structural development and changes in the investment community, the identification of components of financial statement having use value, the management motives for earnings management, and the value relevance of accounting information. In the background of these unresolved issues, the research was conducted through a survey of perceptions by the selected equity investors in Bombay city and the number of respondents stood at 360. Findings of the study show financial reporting was influenced more by legal formalities than by decision usefulness and this conclusion was supported with the lower disclosure level present in the annual reports, the need for increased voluntary disclosure relying on external source of information by the users and the need for more qualitative information in annual reports; and the level of disclosure was basically influenced by management motives; and the hybrid figures drawn from income statement and balance sheet were more useful in decision making process by the users.

Financial Reporting, Financial Information, Decision-Making, Management Motive