This paper employs memetics to argue against the view that standardisation overwhelms the evolution of accounting. I suggest that, in an unregulated setting, accounting procedures constitute classic memes and survive according to their fitness for their environment, which is predominantly a matter of their suitability for investment decision-making. In a standardising regime, the standardising canon embodies a special kind of meme encoding ideas as actions to be imitated to realise those ideas. Evolutionary pressures and the canon develop in tandem, although not necessarily synchronously. If we accept the central tenet of memetics, which is also the assumption underlying the argument challenged here, that memes emerging before regulation were responsive to evolutionary pressures, we can analyse the responsiveness of the standardising canon by examining its relationship to a counterfactual continuation of the pre-regulated regime. The degree of synchronicity is an empirical, but elusive, question and we should follow Dennett’s recommendation that we settle for the philosophical realisations we can glean from memetics. I argue that three factors are of importance in addressing the question. Accounting memes function within a dense ecology, limiting radical and destabilising change. There has been a high degree of continuity, permeability and commonality in the intellection driving development: the same thinking has influenced policy design wherever it has taken place. Finally, the principal determinant of successful adaptation did not change on the transition to standardisation and the canon and its vehicles have survived. Consequently, we can conclude that standardisation has not disrupted the development of accounting.

中文翻译：

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会计准则是模因吗？监管时代会计演进的生存

本文使用模因来反对标准化压倒会计发展的观点。我建议，在不受监管的环境中，会计程序构成了经典的模因，并根据它们对环境的适应性而生存，这主要是它们是否适合投资决策的问题。在标准化制度中，标准化规范体现了一种特殊的模因编码思想，作为被模仿以实现这些思想的行动。进化压力和规范是同步发展的，尽管不一定同步。如果我们接受模因学的中心原则，这也是这里挑战的论点的基础假设，即在监管之前出现的模因对进化压力有反应，我们可以通过检查标准化规范与预先监管制度的反事实延续的关系来分析标准化规范的响应性。同步性的程度是一个经验性的但难以捉摸的问题，我们应该遵循 Dennett 的建议，即满足于我们可以从模因学中收集到的哲学认识。我认为三个因素对于解决这个问题很重要。会计模因在密集的生态系统中发挥作用，限制了激进和破坏稳定的变化。智力驱动发展具有高度的连续性、渗透性和共性：同样的思想影响了政策设计无论在哪里发生。最后，成功适应的主要决定因素在向标准化的过渡中没有改变，并且经典及其车辆幸存下来。