In the 1980s the usefulness of the FASB’s Conceptual Framework was soon questioned.
Indeed, many researchers have pointed out the incompleteness, the inconsistency, the circular reasoning and non-operationality of the American Framework (Dopuch and Sundern, 1980;
Solomons, 1986; Gerboth, 1987; Hines, 1989). Moreover, the decision-useful objective didn’t gather real support when the FASB carried out a survey to determine if constituencies did agree with the Trueblood report objectives of financial reporting (Dopuch and Sunder, 1980). Notwithstanding these issues, the FASB and the IASB go further towards a focus on capital providers needs in their joint project of revision of the Conceptual Framework when writing that financial reporting is not primarily directed to other groups than capital providers. There is a possibility that the objectives assigned to financial accounting as a social activity is directed by a dominant group that imposes its will on all others involved in the activity by making its own objective become the objective of the social activity (Dopuch and Sunder,
1980). Therefore, when criteria are used to justify the identification of primary users, there should be a comprehensive analysis of their definition, their importance for each category of users of financial reporting and if other criteria should be taken into account before reaching strong structuring conclusions on the objective of financial reporting and on identifying their primary users that may reflect the will of a dominant group.

As a conclusion, trying to identify a primary user of financial reporting in order to reduce and facilitate the determination of the objective of general purpose financial reporting may not appear as the most appropriate avenue. An alternative may be to try to identify the common information needs that could be shared by a large range of users,