Institutions Involved in International Convergence of Accounting Standards : A Neo-Institutional and Historical Analysis

Cahiers de recherche n° 2009-01 E2After the implementation of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in the European Union in 2005, many countries including Canada, United States and Mexico have now announced that they will adopt IFRSs for all listed entities from 2011, 2014 and 2012 respectively. Thus, the process of international convergence of accounting standards appears to be entering a culminating stage. There are three theoretical and contextual premises which form the basis of this research. The first is that the process of international convergence of accounting standards (ICAS) has taken place within a highly institutionalized environment characterized by isomorphic pressures directed towards convergence of accounting standards on a worldwide basis. The second premise pertains to the apparent controversy concerning the origins of international accounting harmonization and convergence: American or European. A third contextual premise relates to the lack of prior literature; only a few organizations and institutions have been previously examined and discussed by the research literature. Based on these three contextual premises, the purpose of this paper is double. First of all, we identify the primary institutions and organizations which have been influential in the process of international convergence of accounting standards from the end of the 19th century through the present. Second, employing a framework derived from neo-institutional theory, we seek to explain how this process has been influenced and caused by several primary organizations