Contested rules and shifting boundaries: International standard setting in accounting

The paper investigates the emergence and development, since the Second World War, of a transnational field of governance for accounting and financial reporting. Recent decades have seen a proliferation of activities and initiatives to make financial reporting standards comparable across national borders. This process of transnational or international standards setting is shown to be a highly political process where actors with different backgrounds enter the game with specific interests, perceptions, strategies and resources. In fact, it shows how contest and conflict can become driving forces of international standardization if organized within a widely accepted procedural framework. -- In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird das Spannungsfeld der Entstehung und Entwicklung von internationalen Standards für die Wirtschaftsprüfung und Rechnungslegung seit dem 2. Weltkrieg untersucht. In den letzten Jahrzehnten ist eine Zunahme von Aktivitäten und Initiativen zur grenzüberschreitenden Harmonisierung von Rechnungslegungsstandards zu beobachten. Die Schaffung von transnationalen bzw. internationalen Standards erweist sich als hochpolitischer Prozess, in den Akteure aus unterschiedlichen Bereichen ihre spezifischen Interessen, Wahrnehmungen, Strategien und Ressourcen einbringen. Tatsächlich verdeutlichen diese Vorgänge, dass Konkurrenz und Konflikt als treibende Kräfte für die internationale Standardsetzung dienen können, sofern der Verfahrensrahmen allgemein anerkannt ist.

A Process Perspective on the Formation and Diffusion of Transnational Standards

Standards are receiving increasing attention, especially at the transnational level where standardization aims at coherence and social ordering beyond the nation-state. However, many attempts to bring about uniformity via formalized standards fail. To understand better how such rules successfully span national and organizational boundaries over time, we compare two cases of standardization in international business. Both Windows desktop software and International Accounting Standards demonstrate the need for a process perspective to understand and explain social ordering through standards. Long- lasting standardization processes require conceptualizing how different sequences of transnational standardization relate to each other. We find that at the core of such recursive cycles is the interplay of input and output legitimacy

Standardization Cycles: A Process Perspective on the Formation and Diffusion of Transnational Standards

Standards are receiving increasing attention, especially at the transnational level where standardization aims at coherence and social ordering beyond the nation-state. However, many attempts to bring about uniformity via formalized standards fail. To understand better how such rules successfully span national and organizational boundaries over time, we compare two cases of standardization in international business. Both Windows desktop software and International Accounting Standards demonstrate the need for a process perspective to understand and explain social ordering through standards. Long-lasting standardization processes require conceptualizing how different sequences of transnational standardization relate to each other. We find that at the core of such recursive cycles is the interplay of input and output legitimacy

Changing Responses to Global Framework Agreements

Corporate elites are increasingly held responsible for issues of sustainability including working conditions and workers’ rights in global production networks. We still know relatively little about how they respond to concrete stakeholder initiatives aiming to restrict corporate voluntarism through transnational regulation. In this chapter we report comparative findings on corporate legitimation strategies in response to requests by labor representatives to sign Global Framework Agreements (GFAs). These agreements are intended to hold multinational corporations (MNCs) accountable for the implementation of core labor standards across their supply chains. We propose to broaden management-focused analyses of corporate legitimation strategies by applying a field-oriented perspective that considers the embeddedness of management in a broader web of strategic activity and variable opportunity structures. Our findings suggest that legitimation strategies are developed dynamically along with the rules, positions, and understandings developing around specific regulatory issues in sequences of interactions between elites and challenging groups

Contested rules and shifting boundaries: international standard-setting in accounting

"In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird das Spannungsfeld der Entstehung und Entwicklung von internationalen Standards für die Wirtschaftsprüfung und Rechnungslegung seit dem 2. Weltkrieg untersucht. In den letzten Jahrzehnten ist eine Zunahme von Aktivitäten und Initiativen zur grenzüberschreitenden Harmonisierung von Rechnungslegungsstandards zu beobachten. Die Schaffung von transnationalen bzw. internationalen Standards erweist sich als hochpolitischer Prozess, in den Akteure aus unterschiedlichen Bereichen ihre spezifischen Interessen, Wahrnehmungen, Strategien und Ressourcen einbringen. Tatsächlich verdeutlichen diese Vorgänge, dass Konkurrenz und Konflikt als treibende Kräfte für die internationale Standardsetzung dienen können, sofern der Verfahrensrahmen allgemein anerkannt ist." (Autorenreferat)"The paper investigates the emergence and development, since the Second World War, of a transnational field of governance for accounting and financial reporting. Recent decades have seen a proliferation of activities and initiatives to make financial reporting standards comparable across national borders. This process of transnational or international standards setting is shown to be a highly political process where actors with different backgrounds enter the game with specific interests, perceptions, strategies and resources. In fact, it shows how contest and conflict can become driving forces of international standardization if organized within a widely accepted procedural framework." (author's abstract

Integrated computer supported editing, approaches and strategies

Speaking about "computer tools for editions" most people speak about of the more refined varieties of typesetting systems. On the contrary it can be argued, that the availability of computer based methods for the presentation of huge data objects, could reopen a discussion of what an "edition" actually is. An introduction into such a redefinition is given: an "edition" being defined as a complex of interlinking representations of different degrees of abstraction from the original form of the text. The way in which scanned manuscript, transcribed text and formalized representations of knowledge about the text interrelate, are described

Governance-Ansätze in der Steuerungsdiskussion: Steuerung und Selbstregulierung unter den Bedingungen fortschreitender Internationalisierung

"Ziel des vorliegenden Papiers ist es, das Governance-Konzept an die deutsche Steuerungsdiskussion anzuschließen und es auf seinen analytischen Gehalt hin zu überprüfen. Sowohl tatsächliche Veränderungen im Verhältnis von Politik und Gesellschaft als auch die Entwicklungen der Steuerungsdiskussion haben das Augenmerk auf die Frage nach neuen Formen von Koordination und Steuerung gerichtet. Steuerungskonfigurationen stellen ein komplexes Zusammenspiel von politisch-administrativer Steuerung und gesellschaftlicher Selbstregulierung unter Beteiligung einer Vielzahl von Akteuren dar. In zwei Schritten soll die Brauchbarkeit von Governance-Konzepten für den Steuerungsdiskurs untersucht werden. Zunächst geht es darum, die vorliegenden Steuerungsarrangements dahingehend zu untersuchen, wie sich Veränderungen in den Konfigurationen von Steuerung und Koordination auswirken, insbesondere, wie sich die Rolle des Nationalstaates verändert. In einem zweiten Schritt wird die Eignung des Governance-Konzepts als Analyseraster für Steuerungsfragen geprüft. Anhand der Differenzierung in analytische und normative Governance-Ansätze sowie deren Unterteilung in produktive und skeptische Steuerungsverständnisse wird eine Systematisierung vorgeschlagen, die helfen soll, die Unübersichtlichkeit der Governance-Diskussion zu verringern. Am Ende wird festgestellt, dass die Bedeutung der Governance-Begrifflichkeit in einem konzeptionellen Perspektivwechsel liegt. Dies betrifft die Verschiebung von öffentlicher Steuerung zu privater Selbstregulierung ebenso wie die Erweiterung vormals national geprägter Steuerungsvorstellungen. Governance-Ansätze verkörpern eine konzeptionelle Abwendung vom Nationalen hin zu sub- und/ oder supranationalen Entscheidungsebenen. Darüber hinaus aber - und hierin liegt der eigentliche Mehrwert von Governance-Konzepten - weisen sie auf die zunehmende Verflechtung dieser unterschiedlichen Ebenen hin und bereichern damit den Steuerungsdiskurs." (Autorenreferat)"The paper aims at linking the governance-concept to the German discussion on steering and regulation and reviews the concept's analytical potential. Actual changes as well as theoretical developments in the discussion of steering have contributed to the need to focus on the concepts of coordination and regulation. Steering configurations are seen as complex interactions of administrative steering and societal self-regulation with a variety of actors participating. The contribution of governance-concepts to the theoretical discussion is to be looked at in two ways. Firstly, the developments in the configurations of steering and coordination are analysed, in particular focussing on the impact on the role of the nation state. In a second step the contribution of the governance-concept as an analytical tool to examine the questions of steering is assessed. Based on a differentiation regarding analytical and normative concepts of governance on the one hand and the distinction between productive and sceptical applications of the concepts on the other, a classification is suggested in order to deal with the inconsistency of governance-concepts. Finally the paper concludes that the use of the governance terminology and its implications are particularly valuable in cases where they are contributing to a change of the theoretical perspective. In addition to a shift from public steering to private self-regulation it is also important to recognise that former nationally dominated concepts of steering need to be complemented. The variety of modes of governance represent a conceptual departure away from the national and towards sub- and/ or supranational levels of decision making. Moreover - and this is seen as the actual contribution of governance concepts to the questions of steering - they are indicating an increasing integration of these various levels of decision making and thus enrich the debate on steering." (author's abstract