Accounting Firms: Global Reach without Transnational Form

Jochen Zimmermann and Jan-Christoph Volckmer

Chapter 11 in Transnational Corporations and Transnational Governance, 2015, pp 299-324 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The market for auditing services is dominated by four accounting firms that operate worldwide: Deloitte & Touche (Deloitte), Ernst & Young (E&Y), KPMG and PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC). The so-called Big 4 offer auditing services, tax advisory and consulting. In 2011, each of the Big 4 was represented in at least 145 countries. Altogether the Big 4 employ more than half a million people and have realised a turnover of more than 100 billion USD in all three service lines. These numbers make them comparable with international corporations from other industries. However, the Big 4 accounting firms differ in three important ways from most global players. First, they belong to the group of professional service firms (Suddaby et al., 2009). Characterised by high knowledge intensity, low capital intensity and a professional workforce (Von Nordenflycht, 2010), their business model differs systematically from that of most other corporations. Second, they mainly use the corporate form of a professional partnership (Greenwood & Empson, 2003). Third, they entertain intense reciprocal relationships with their regulatory environments (Eberle & Lauter, 2011). This applies in particular to accounting and auditing standards.

Keywords: International Financial Reporting Standard; Supervisory Board; Multinational Enterprise; Transnational Corporation; International Business Study (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-46769-0_11

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781137467690

DOI: 10.1057/9781137467690_11

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().