Constituting Compliance: Reconciling Theory and Method to Analyze Compliance Practice

Regulation and compliance are largely under-studied from a constitutive perspective and are consequential to organizational life and economic well-being. In the scope of this special issue, financial compliance offers a nuanced and complex case to elucidate the contributions of Communication as Constitutive of Organizations (CCO) for innovative qualitative research in business communication. This study employs both discourse analytic and ethnographic perspectives to cultivate a methodological approach that best fits CCO theorizing and emphasizes communication as an explanatory framework for complex organizational phenomena such as compliance. As compliance is not a construct contained in a singular organization, this study adopts a multi-sited approach, analyzing data from four financial organizations, highlighting the relational nature of the constitution of compliance. This study articulates the importance of viewing accounting as organizational compliance practice —accounts are not merely representations of compliance, but this representational work is compliance practice. These findings demonstrate the potential of applying CCO as a framework to guide multi-sited, mixed methodological study necessary to grapple with the complexities of compliance practice by reframing the accomplishment of compliance as communicatively constituted.