Special issue in governance and accounting regulation
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Special issue in governance and accounting regulation Changes in standards setting and in the governance of standard setting: are they adequate responses to recurring financial crises and accounting scandals? Roberto Di Pietra • Gu¨nther Gebhardt Stuart McLeay • Joshua Ronen
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Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2012
In 2010, when the previous Special Issue on Governance and Accounting Regulation was published, we commented on the likely impact of a number of notable events on international accounting and its forms of regulation—not only developments in the institutional configuration of accounting but also market failures that possibly could stem from accounting shortcomings.1 In this latter respect, we emphasized the seemingly intensifying interaction between corporate governance and regulatory action in constraining accounting discretion. Briefly, we summarised the situation in terms of the following: 1.
2.
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The immediate effects of the financial crisis, which placed the spotlight on opaque financial reporting systems arising from regulatory structures that are not fit for purpose; The ongoing fallout from high-profile corporate accounting scandals, which pushed lawmakers to further accelerate regulatory reform at the national level, and to increase participation in international, indeed extraterritorial, resolution
See Di Pietra et al. (2010).
R. Di Pietra (&) University of Siena, Siena, Italy e-mail: [email protected] G. Gebhardt Goethe Business School, Frankfurt University, Frankfurt, Germany e-mail: [email protected] S. McLeay University of Sidney, Sydney, Australia e-mail: [email protected] J. Ronen Stern School of Business, New York University, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected]
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of the accounting gridlock in the EU, and also the standoff between the IASB and FASB; The quest underway for more effective regulation, to be linked more closely to corporate governance, and to be sufficiently dynamic to cater for the varying and changing characteristics of firms.
In more general terms, the predicament caused by corporate excess, and further politicised in the wake of the financial crisis, started a widespread debate over potential and competing solutions, and in certain respects created a degree of overoptimism concerning what might be achieved in the short term. One reaction in the meantime has been to promulgate new regulations on both accountability and governance, which is seen presumably as a way of improving the situation within a politically limited timespan. But the evident ‘crusade’ against opaque accounting has stirred another reaction, a global re-examination not only of the acceptability of divergent accounting methods, but also of the adequacy of the processes of accounting regulation that legitimise divergent corporate accounting practices, and indeed the suitability of the accounting regulatory institutions themselves. The drive for greater transparency in accounting is being taken forward mainly in the internationa
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