ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the nature of the extensive efforts to reconfigure the regulation of the accounting profession. It illuminates how the state, and in particular its supporting agencies, has engaged in forms of institutional work in its interactions with the accounting profession in order to legitimise and implement radical changes to the profession’s governance. The chapter outlines the nature of regulation of the accounting profession and explores the process through which the demise of self-regulation and public oversight has unfolded. It discusses the widespread view that transnational development in oversight has been readily translated to the national level while simultaneously exploring the role that the ‘Big N’ professional services firms have played as the sites of governance have shifted. The chapter also outlines how the accounting profession has strategically responded to efforts to interfere in its governance by engaging in enterprising efforts to obstruct change aimed at making it more accountable to the public interest it claims to serve.
