Defining the IASB's governance network: a social network analysis

The purpose of this study was to define and examine the IASB's governance network. The IASB's governance network was bound to include 14 organisational members and 407 individual actors. I used social network methodology to examine the professional and geographic perspectives represented as well as the extent to which the governance network was structurally embedded. It was found that the network forms a definable hierarchy that exhibits qualities of structural embeddedness. Banking interests were more embedded within the governance network than any other professional, academic, or social group. Also, a strong Western influence was detected. The societal benefit of this effort was to engage society in general and accounting researchers in particular in hopes of encouraging discourse about regulatory processes with both macro and micro consequences.