Professions and Professional Service Firms

9 Regulation and governance of the professions

Institutional work and the demise of ‘delegated’ self-regulation of the accounting profession

Mary Canning and Brendan O’Dwyer

Introduction

While professions are now widely viewed as primary societal institutional agents (Scott 2008) assuming central roles in creating, disrupting and maintaining prevailing institutions (Currie et al. 2012; Lawrence and Suddaby 2006; Lawrence, Suddaby and Leca 2009, 2011; Suddaby and Viale 2011), they are also often the objects of institutional change efforts, especially regarding how they are regulated. Nowhere has this change been more profound than in the accounting profession. In the last fifteen years as the profession has evolved to embrace and serve globalised ...