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The impact of meta-standardization upon standards convergence: the case of the international accounting standard for off-balance-sheet financing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Matthias Thiemann
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Abstract

Analyses of transnational governance formation point to the destabilizing effects transnational standard setters have upon national institutional configurations. Isomorphic pressures, it is argued, lead to the standardization of procedures used and actors involved in standard setting processes. What is not clear, however, is to what extent this meta-standardization increases the chances for convergence of national with transnational standards. This article explores this question for the case of the international accounting standard for off-balance-sheet financing in the Netherlands, France and Germany. It argues that the reconfiguration of domestic governance architectures had a decisive impact on convergence processes. Counter-intuitively, copying goals, membership and procedures of the transnational, private International Accounting Standards Committee limited the chances of rule convergence, as it threatened to deinstitutionalize the standard-setting role of an important national champion of rule-convergence, the banking regulator. The institutional template developed at the transnational level created actor-mismatch at the national level between those formulating and those implementing the rules, thereby weakening the coalition for rule change. A strong coalition, however, is needed to overcome vested business interests that favor convergence with transnational templates for legitimacy gains at the same time that they oppose convergence to contentious rules that limit their business activities.

Type
Symposium on ‘Multiplicity and Plurality in the World of Standards’, Guest Editors: Frank den Hond and Marie-Laure Djelic
Information
Business and Politics , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , April 2014 , pp. 79 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © V.K. Aggarwal 2014 and published under exclusive license to Cambridge University Press 

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