Collective Institutional Entrepreneurship for the EPSAS Program: The Missing Link

This paper explores how transnational accounting standards-setting processes unfold over time. By applying the theoretical lens of collective institutional entrepreneurship this paper reveals the reasons for the delays emerging in the European Public Sector Accounting Standards (EPSAS) program. With a focus on the Italian national and subnational contexts, the findings suggest that spontaneous collaboration among different categories of institutional entrepreneurs is difficult to accomplish in a multi-level accounting change process. Three categories of institutional entrepreneurs are potentially capable of accomplishing a multi-level accounting change such as the issuing of European Public Sector Accounting Standards (EPSAS): the supranational, the intermediate on the national level, and a number of sectorial active on the subnational level. When the mediating role of national institutional entrepreneurs at the interface between supra- and subnational institutional entrepreneurs is limited, accounting harmonization halts.