Accounting, professions and regulation: Locating the sites of professionalization

The introduction of accounting and auditing oversight boards (OBs) has been promoted on a global scale as a key component of the international financial architecture that has emerged over the past two decades. Such institutions, modeled on the Anglo-American tradition, are domestically organized and embedded within distinctively diverse institutional contexts. Their role is to ease agency problems, improve the quality of financial reporting, and help provide stability in the global financial system. We employ an institutional approach, located within the broader political economy framework of global capitalism, to examine the establishment and operation of the new regulatory regime in Greece. Greece, a member of the European Union, exhibits characteristics of a "delegative" democracy, i.e. a traditionally weak institutionalization, reform (in)capacity problems and a clientelistic political system. Our case study shows that the formation and operation of the newly-established system of oversight is conditioned by local political and economic constraints and, thus, does not automatically translate into concrete benefits for the quality of financial reporting. We also draw attention to the structural mismatch between a progressing globalized financial integration and the fragmented nature of the system of oversight, and illustrate that OBs' independence from local governments is an important but neglected issue.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transplanting Anglo-American accounting oversight boards to a diverse institutional context

Caramanis

Dedoulis

Leventis

2015

“…Indeed, how practitioners come to see themselves impacts upon how regulations are interpreted and enacted (Cooper and Robson, 2006) and hence on the deployment of state policy. Cooper and Robson (2006) urge researchers to move beyond the professional bodies and associations, standard setters and the state and to consider the institutions and sites of professionalization projects. Accordingly, interview data was also collected from highly experienced insolvency professionals that currently work in the Scottish insolvency market.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whilst prior studies of the accounting profession have addressed accounting regulations (Cooper and Robson, 2006), the audit function (Carpenter and Dirsmith, 1993;Power, 1997) (including auditor independence (Robson et al, 1994) and the internal audit market (Covaleski et al, 2003) and more recently, the market for corporate taxation (Hasseldine et al, 2011), there is a dearth of research on the insolvency field (see Walker, 1995;Halliday and Carruthers, 1996;Walker, 2004aWalker, , 2004bCooper and Joyce, 2013). Accordingly, the empirical focus of this paper is upon the British insolvency profession.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Knowledge mandates in the state–profession dynamic: A study of the British insolvency profession

Joyce

2014

1At the beginning of the 21 st century, the British Government was faced with significant policy decisions to make in the field of corporate insolvency. The impact of the American rescue culture and the acceptability of failure, the development of international insolvency laws within the European Union and localized problems inherent in current insolvency practice provided the impetus for legal reform. Using the work of Halliday (1985Halliday ( , 1987, this paper seeks to understand how professional knowledge and authority impact upon the state-profession relationship and the development and deployment of state policy. The British Government reacted to the global and local pressures with a shift to codification and prescription, greater enforcement of the legal system and an attempt to control and institutionalize insolvency practitioners' moral authority. However in spite of radical reforms, insolvency practitioners' services were retained and their private, expert knowledge systems and authority valorized over corporate management. Insolvency practitioners' localized knowledge, the capacity to disguise moral authority as technical expertise and their networks and coalitions with senior members of Parliament and capital providers, resulted in an interpretation and implementation of legislation that has not seen the dramatic shift in practice that the reforms had envisaged. Despite the reforms being triggered within the global institutional sphere of corporate failure, the institutional sphere of corporate failure, at least in Scotland, retains a local definition, with business rescue packages derived from professionals' social intelligence, their daily micro practices and localized networks.

“…In recent years, considerable attention on regulation has highlighted its significance (see, e.g., Cooper & Robson, 2006;Humphrey et al, 2009;Richardson, 2009). This attention includes the appropriate balance between older style 'command and control' models, and more responsive approaches to securing compliance, particularly within governmental regulation.…”

Section: Regulation Boundaries and Bourdieumentioning

confidence: 99%

Boundary work and tax regulation: A Bourdieusian view

Gracia

Oats

2012

Boundaries are ubiquitous in modern social life, and the work of creating and maintaining boundaries is particularly evident within regulatory fields. Through the analysis of a recent critical incident in the tax field (Arctic Systems) with which the accounting profession is intimately associated, this paper uses a Bourdieusian lens to unravel the relational complexities of the regulation of tax avoidance at the complex and fuzzy boundary between acceptable and unacceptable tax practice. We develop an alternative, relational interpretation of tax regulation and contribute to a more nuanced understanding of regulatory practice within the tax field that also raises questions about regulatory practice more widely. We conclude by highlighting how a move towards 'relational' regulation might contribute to improved understanding of regulatory processes and practices.