Becoming influential: Strategies of control, expertise, and socialisation in transnational governance of accounting regulation

Abstract

This study examines how accounting professionals empower themselves to become influential in the transnational governance space of accounting regulation and how their ideas can persist after they leave their powerful positions. Combining the concept of issue professionals with elements from the transnational governance literature, our multi-episode study investigates the role of six issue professionals in the decades-long reform process towards anchoring the rights approach in the international lease accounting standard (IFRS 16) and the definition of assets in the IASB's conceptual framework. We highlight how these issue professionals developed an extended commitment to the rights approach, which motivated them to advance from national to more central positions in the transnational governance space. We show how their specialised knowledge on lease accounting and asset definition allowed them to navigate positions and seize control over the treatment of both accounting issues. We further demonstrate that the interplay between socialisation and formalisation of interaction patterns fostered the incremental anchoring of the rights approach at the IASB once the issue professionals who provided the impetus for change had left their influential positions. Our study contributes to the literature on transnational governance and the political economy of accounting standard-setting by elaborating on the incremental rise to power of individuals and groups, and their influence on transnational institution-building processes.