Anchored in an institutional perspective, the concept of 'normativity' refers to the idea that a rule can be seen as more or less binding by actors and that accordingly they do not comply always in full. We apply this concept to the study of compliance with the standard IAS38 particularly in development expenditure in France. The empirical study is conducted on the basis of 1190 annual reports from 225 companies over the period 2005-2011 (post adoption of IFRS). We observe that apparent compliance with the requirements of the standard is lower than that expected in an environment of perfect markets.