And though the law pertains mainly to financial reporting, its principles can be adapted to other organizational practices.
After years of toil, auditing firms are still wrestling to reconcile America's rules-based GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) with their international counterpart, IFRS (international financial reporting standards), which rely more on broad principles.
Still, a consensus is emerging that the environmental movement needs something akin to the generally accepted accounting principles that govern financial reporting.
Chief executive Riccardo Zacconi is hunting around the West Coast for a Silicon Valley-based board member and is changing internal financial reporting to meet generally accepted accounting principles.
Similar to the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) that govern financial reporting in mainstream businesses, there exists a nascent set of Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (IRIS) that seek to provide standardized vocabulary for social performance categorized by industries.
In early 2012, the company had restructured for a possible IPO, hunted for a Silicon Valley-based board member, and put its financial reporting more in line with generally accepted accounting principles.
In 1971, for example, the now-defunct Accounting Principles Board, in the interest of conservative financial reporting, stated that the investment tax credit should be amortized over the life of the asset for which it applies.
He posited that some discrepancies may have arisen because of differences between generally accepted accounting principles, which are used in the United States, and international financial reporting standards, which are used in Britain.
"All stakeholders of the Olympic movement have accepted the basic principles of good governance, including transparent and democratic decision-making processes, financial reporting and auditing according to international standards, publication of financial reports and ethics and compliance rules".
