Explaining the Jurisdictional Settlement between Accountants and Actuaries: Standard Setting, Bureaucratization and Counterpart Units

• In Event: 256 - Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. Industry Emergence and Evolution

Abstract

I address the question of how jurisdictional settlements between professions are determined under conditions bureaucratization by examining two puzzles relating to the division of labour between the actuarial and accounting professions in the mid-twentieth century. The first is the expansion of the actuarial jurisdiction from a limited jurisdiction to a diffuse one. The second is the concurrently increasing bureaucratization of the accounting profession and the increasing autonomy of the actuarial profession. Using a multi-method qualitative approach, combining archives, technical texts and interviews, I explain the evolving jurisdictional settlement between the two professions as the consequence of the shifting dominance of professional segments over the setting of pension fund financial accounting standards and actuarial standards. Further, I show how bureaucratized professional segments, acting as counterpart units to autonomous segments setting standards, play an important role within standard setting. I suggest that a focus on bureaucratization in explaining jurisdictional settlement between professions emphasizes the importance of standards of governance.

Author

• Yally Avrahampour, London School of Economics and Political Science