Waves of global standardization : small practitioners’ resilience and intra-professional fragmentation within the accounting profession

Abstract

We examine how small practitioners perceive and react to global standards of practice and the underlying mechanisms put in place by the accounting profession to ensure “appropriate” implementation. Interviews with practitioners, standard setters and other informants indicate that small practitioners consider many features of global standards ill-adapted to their practices’ particular circumstances. However, they do not tend to resist actively global standardization, adopting instead a logic of resilience under which they mobilize coping mechanisms, such as support mobilization, selective application of standards, and increased involvement in the activities of the profession. An important paradox ensues from small practitioners’ professional resilience: by adapting to globalization pressures, small practitioners arguably sustain their own marginalization and intensify the fragmentation processes within the accounting profession. For instance, their role is increasingly peripheral within the audit market, and they are often constrained to use “second order” accounting standards.