Regulatory and Legal Dimensions of Global Supply Chains: A Theoretical Accounting Perspective on Trade Compliance and Governance

Abstract

Global supply chains increasingly operate within dense legal and regulatory environments shaped by trade compliance requirements, disclosure regimes, and expanding expectations related to transparency, sustainability, and accountability. These developments have transformed accounting from a conventional reporting function into a governance mechanism that supports traceability, control, and compliance assurance across multi-jurisdictional trade networks. Despite this transformation, theoretical accounting research remains limited in explaining how regulatory structures and legal accountability mechanisms systematically influence accounting governance, control systems, and decision-making in global supply chain contexts. This study advances accounting theory by examining the regulatory and legal dimensions of global supply chains from a theoretical accounting perspective, with particular emphasis on trade compliance and governance. A purely conceptual and analytical research design is adopted, integrating insights from accounting governance theory, regulatory compliance scholarship, and legal accountability literature to develop a comprehensive conceptual framework. The analysis demonstrates that regulatory structures operate as institutional constraints that formalize accounting compliance through documentation, traceability, and defensible reporting practices. Legal accountability mechanisms further strengthen accounting governance by embedding liability, enforcement, and oversight expectations within accounting control architectures. Trade compliance requirements align closely with accounting control systems, positioning them as compliance-enabling infrastructures that translate regulatory mandates into operational governance practices and reduce discretionary accounting judgment under heightened regulatory intensity. By repositioning accounting as a governance technology embedded within legal and regulatory architectures of global supply chains, the study contributes to theoretical accounting research and supports future theory refinement in compliance-oriented accounting.