Accounting professionalization and the state: the case of Saudi Arabia

This study examines the professional project of the Saudi Organization of Certified Public Accountants (SOCPA). It seeks to explain how SOCPA secured legislated authority to control standard setting and entry to professional practice before the organization developed technical and financial capacity as a professional body. The state corporatist system of Saudi Arabia provided fertile ground for SOCPA's promoters to invoke the need for an accounting body to advance Saudi Arabia's socio-cultural values. The promoters advocated the role of such a body in setting suitable accounting standards for the Sharia law context of Saudi Arabia, and developing an indigenous system of professional accountancy training. The project made a detour from its initial plan for an autonomous professional association, and instead organized SOCPA as a hybrid entity that blends some characteristics of a state agency and a professional body. Further, the project exhibited hybridity in accommodating incumbent practitioners into SOCPA membership, and in setting accounting standards using a mix of American accounting standards and Saudi Arabia's Sharia law. Through these strategies, SOCPA succeeded in securing the authority to restrict the entry of foreign nationals and candidates affiliated with overseas accountancy bodies into the Saudi market.