The “secret life” of the Statement of Cash Flow: A bibliometric analysis

Abstract

The International Financial Reporting Standard Foundation issued a new Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting. According to this document, the general purpose of financial reporting is to provide financial information about the reporting entity which is useful to existing and potential investors, lenders and other creditors in making decisions related to raise resources for the entity. Focused on the Statement of Cash Flow analysis the main objective of this paper is to provide an overview about how academic researchers have evolved about the usefulness of this Statement. Firstly, we sought to find the best database to perform a bibliometric analysis on the sample identified about the Statement of Cash Flow research. Secondly, we analysed the different stages of the research trends and the main topics. As interesting results of the analysis we can highlight that the clusters in the bibliographic network match with the research lines identified and connections between the papers have been increasing further through networks. The research lines mentioned by the accounting regulators, who issued the cash flow standards, have mostly concluded that the Statement of Cash Flow is useful to fulfill those purposes together with the researchers.