Status Quo and Potential of XBRL for Business and Information Systems Engineering

The eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) was recently mandated in the USA as the standard for electronic financial reporting. Since June 2009, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has required all listed companies to provide their financial reports in XBRL. Similarly, from 2011 all German companies will be mandated to use XBRL in the context of reporting to tax authorities. The growing importance of XBRL is the motivation for this paper, exploring the progress of research conducted in the XBRL domain. The results of this study show that the majority of the 57 analyzed XBRL-related academic papers adopt an empirical research design, with researchers using methods such as descriptive statistical analyses, interviews, and case studies to analyze the international acceptance and adoption of XBRL as a financial reporting standard. The paper provides a comprehensive and structured overview of current XBRL research and delivers recommendations for future research topics for both the academic and practitioner communities. This paper also identifies the lack of an integrated, data-oriented, and technical approach in current global XBRL research which is necessary to meet the requirements of financial reporting in the future and to which Business and Information Systems Engineering (BISE) may contribute.