Abstract Understanding the conceptual framework (CF) assists in understanding the issues in its construction. Existing characterisations of the CF as a theory of accounting and as the outcome of a political process are examined and found not to identify essential characteristics or have different interpretations. Recent work on the CF that identifies essential characteristics finds that the CF is something that identifies what is wanted from financial reporting. The paper also identifies issues that arise in constructing it. Various attempts to deal with these issues by those who construct CFs are examined. They are re-described in the light of a better understanding of the nature of a CF. The paper concludes that progress in constructing a future CF will only be made if the nature of the CF is grasped and issues that need to be dealt with, given the new characterisation, are confronted head-on.

中文翻译：

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概念框架–漫长而曲折的道路……

摘要了解概念框架（CF）有助于理解其构架中的问题。对CF作为会计理论和政治过程结果的现有特征进行了研究，结果发现这些特征无法识别基本特征或具有不同的解释。识别基本特征的CF的最新工作发现CF可以识别财务报告中需要的东西。本文还指出了构建它时出现的问题。研究了构建CF的人为解决这些问题所做的各种尝试。为了更好地了解CF的性质，对它们进行了重新描述。本文得出的结论是，只有掌握了CF的性质并解决需要解决的问题，才会在构建未来CF方面取得进展。