(No) Limits to Anglo-American accounting? Reconstructing the history of the International Accounting Standards Committee: A review article

The development of the current International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) from the earlier International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) provides insight into many issues of international financial reporting, among them the characteristics of international accounting standards themselves. This article reviews Camfferman and Zeff’s [Camfferman, K., & Zeff, S. A. (2007). Financial reporting and global capital markets. A history of the international accounting standards committee 1973–2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press] volume on the organizational development of the IASC and contextualizes it in the broader literature of cross-border standardization in accounting. While having produced a seminal piece, the authors take a clear Anglo-American perspective. The downsides are insufficiencies regarding a simplistic understanding of experts and expertise, a neglect of the role of auditing firms, and only an imbalanced integration of different stakeholders.