مدل های کسب و کار به عنوان پایه ای جهت تنظیم گزارشگری مالی

ABSTRACT Business models as a basis for regulation of financial reporting

Two authoritative documents have recently incorporated the term ‘business model’ as a part of financial reporting regulation. IFRS 9 paragraph 4.1 (IASB 2009a) states:

An entity shall classify financial assets as subsequently measured at either amortised cost or fair value on the basis of both:

(a) the entity’s business model for managing the financial assets; and (b) the contractual1 cash flow characteristics of the financial asset.

And, the recently issued UK Corporate Governance Code (hereafter UKGCG 2010, p 18) states:

The directors should include in the annual report an explanation of the basis on which the company generates or preserves value over the longer term (the business model) and the strategy for delivering the objectives of the company. The term ‘business model’ is a new addition to the lexicon of financial reporting and, as such, one is prompted to ask what is its function and why it is necessary. In this section of the paper the origins of the term and plausible interpretations are discussed.

Words matter. And words mean what people use them to mean, rather than what prescriptive dictionaries or individual authorities would like them to mean. However there is a great deal of diversity in what people mean by a ‘business model’. Baden-Fuller and Morgan (2010) and Demil and Lecocq (2010) analyse some of these differences. The term ‘business model’ is a relatively recent arrival in the management literature. The earliest example of it I have come across was an isolated usage in the nineteenth century referring to a young man using another businessman’s behaviour as an exemplar. This is an example of one meaning for ‘model’ as something to be emulated.

But, although there are sporadic instances of ‘business model’ appearing in print thereafter, the frequency of use grew in the 1970 and 1980s when the term was employed mainly to describe computer-based models of business events and processes. In the pre-spreadsheet era, expensive software was needed to produce models that would now be routine to implement using spreadsheets. This form of modelling illustrates the predominant management science and information systems usage, in which a model is a simplified version of reality. Models, in general, can take many forms, such as spreadsheets, systems of equations, diagrams or narrative description; however, business models are usually expressed in narrative form, illustrated by diagrams.

The advantage of simplifying reality is that real situations may be too complex to analyse fully, and, by focussing attention on important decision variables, decisions can be made more cheaply and reliably. For example, a road map is more useful than a more ‘realistic’ aerial photograph, if one wants to navigate from Pisa to Siena.

The widespread use of the term ‘model’ in the strategy and organisational theory literature emerged in the 1990s from use within management science and information systems, particularly in relation to e-business (Demil and Lecocq 2010), but as use of the term spread there has grown an assumption that there is a finite number of models and that businesses can be classified as adopting one or other of these models either in a bottom up way based on induction (a taxonomy) or top down way based on theory (a typology—e.g. Malone et al. 2006; Morris et al. 2005) or a combination of the two. In this sense, a particular business might be regarded as the expression of some underlying ideal form of business model, in the Platonic sense.

Baden-Fuller and Morgan (2010) suggest that for management academics ‘business model’ is a generic term that carries an intermediate level of detail between the levels of the individual entity and the broad brush approach of economic theories of the firm. As such, the concept embodies aspects of both a simplified version of reality (scale model) and an approach to be emulated (role model or recipe).

Various writers stress that ‘‘business model’’ is both a static and an evolutionary concept. The static concept involves looking at the inter-relationship of the different parts of the model whereas, in practice, models are descriptive, predictive and instrumental. Managers use analysis of models as a spur to innovation and change. Change is largely evolutionary and successful business models are rarely conceived fully formed but are way points in a process of change that requires continual ‘fine tuning’ of the core components of the business (Demil and Lecocq 2010, p 230; Harford 2011, p 4).

Models are subjective; different observers may well describe an entity’s model in different ways. There are alternative perceptions of what businesses are doing, particularly their ‘value propositions’. For example, is a company selling posh cigarette lighters in the market for tobacco-related products, or is it in the gift market? Is Diageo in the market for tasty alcoholic drinks or does its key strength lie in its distribution channels? (Parmalee 2007). Does a university provide education, a signal of intellectual quality, a pleasant way for students to pass their time, access to a network of soon-to-be influential people or a credential?

The UKCGC (above) characterises the business model as ‘‘the basis on which the company generates or preserves value over the longer term’’.2 The word ‘value’ is itself open to interpretation. For whom is the firm creating value? One view is that value is the total economic surplus generated by the firm’s activities comprising consumer surplus and organisational slack, possibly together with normal economic profit. Another view is that ‘value’ is to be equated with shareholder value. The concept of value adopted is important for financial measurement: if the former concept were adopted, it seems at least plausible that financial reporting would need to open its scope of enquiry considerably; if the latter, then a focus on shareholders seems to render the variety of models much less relevant, as firms are all presumed to be intent on a single objective—maximisation of shareholder value—a road we have been down before.

What is the relationship of an entity’s business model with objectives, strategy and value? These concepts have been familiar terms in management theory for a long time. It would have been quite possible for IFRS 9 to have couched its requirement in terms of a strategy for particular assets rather than a business model.