Abstract
Regulatory arrangements adopted in most Western countries involve the participation of both private‐sector (professional) bodies and public‐sector agencies in the formulation and administration of accounting rules. The political processes associated with the efforts of interest groups to secure favoured outcomes may involve disputes over regulatory arrangements as well as the content of specific rules.This case study reviews inter‐organizational conflict during the 1980s between government regulatory bodies and the accounting profession as they handled proposals for the introduction of disclosure rules concerning related party transactions (RPTs).The case study illustrates how debates about the content and drafting of rules on RPTs took place in a complex organizational setting; how the activities of the profession's standard‐setting bodies were hardly consistent with the pluralist ideal; but that when considered in the context of complex interactions between different agencies, the notion of ‘pluralism’ is of limited value when describing the underlying political processes involved in the development of accounting rules; and how simple models of‘corporatism’ failed to describe the dynamics of political processes surrounding particular issues. It is suggested that identifying the ‘domains’ of major participants in the standard‐setting process, and analysing threats to these domains, may provide richer descriptions of regulatory processes than have been presented previously.
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