State versus Market: Contending Interests in the Struggle to Control French Accounting Standardisation

The paper concerns the struggle between different interest groups to control or significantly influeence the objectives, institutional arrangments and processes of French Accounting Standardisation. Its particular focus of interest is the state agency established to deal with standardisation, namely the National Accounting Council, the Conseil National de la Comptabilité (AFC) and its predecessors. The period addressed spans from 1942 to the present. It appears that the French accounting standardisation is grounded in a profund attachment by the state to the values of the Etat colbertiste.