. (2010). Powerful players: how constituents captured the setting of IFRS 6, an accounting standard for the extractive industries. Accounting Forum, 34 (2), 76-88.Powerful players: How constituents captured the setting of IFRS 6, an accounting standard for the extractive industries AbstractThis paper illustrates the influence of powerful players in the setting of IFRS 6, a new International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) for the extractive industries. A critical investigative inquiry of the international accounting standard setting process, using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), reveals some of the key players, analyses the surrounding discourse and its implications, and assesses the outcomes. An analysis of small crosssection of comment letters submitted to the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) by one international accounting firm, one global mining corporation and one industry group reveal the hidden coalitions between powerful players. These coalitions indicate that the regulatory process of setting IFRS 6 has been captured by powerful extractive industries constituents so that it merely codifies existing industry practice.

Accounting for the extractive industries has been a contested issue for decades as a result of a choice of different methods of costing available and the economic impacts of these methods on companies' financial results. When the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) embarked on its extractive industries project in 1998, it attempted to create uniform accounting practices. An archival study of constituent responses to the IASB's Issues Paper revealed that the economic consequences argument was relied upon again to argue for retaining choice. The IASB's international accounting standard, IFRS 6, issued in 2004, once again permitted choice between methods, illustrating the effectiveness of the economic consequences argument in perpetuating past practice.

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