Lost in translation? Travel of ideas and institutional voids: reporting of payments to governments in Sweden

Purpose We extend theorizing of the travel of ideas and the encountering of institutional voids. We explore the translation of EU accounting laws to a member state, Sweden, including coverage of outcomes, focusing upon translation of mandatory disclosures from 2016 whereby large and/or listed extractives (extractives industry companies) produce Reports on Payments to Governments (RPGs). We illuminate problematic and progressive (including some unintended) dimensions/manifestations of the translation. Design/methodology/approach A case study of Swedish/EU law-making focuses on the travel, entailing interpretations/impacts, of accounting laws from transnational to national level, mobilizing the travel of ideas and the encountering of institutional voids. Data was collected through interviews and interactions with regulators/experts involved (good access being attained) and potential RPG users, with evidence from publicly available documents and contextual appreciation. Findings Developments reflect displacement at the transnational–national/local interface. Swedish regulators/experts placed the RPGs’ section in a large national legislative package. Visibly, regulators mostly attended to the package’s promoted focus, SME accounting. RPGs were marginalized. RPGs came to be considered neither “financial” nor “nonfinancial” accounting, encountering the site of an institutional void vis-à-vis Sweden’s institutionalized accounting perspectives. There was a tendency to downplay relevance and potentiality of the RPGs locally: a missed opportunity to debate and build identification with ostensibly progressive accounting legislation. Concurrently, we uncover some local outcomes, unintended vis-à-vis regulators’ official rationale, including outcomes suggesting more progressive potential. Originality/value This lies in the analysis of the Swedish accounting regulatory process focused on EU laws, highlighting translation/travel of accounting constructions (entailing impacts on reception/usage), including local encountering of institutional voids.