Regulation of higher education worldwide has become a complex process. New developments, such as the accreditation of institutions and programmes by foreign, and usually private, agencies, has not been the focus of scholarship on regulation and quality assurance in higher education. This article addresses the issue of accreditation of graduate business programmes in Argentina by foreign accreditation agencies. Through a regulatory analysis, this study indicates that this emerging trend challenges classic understandings of regulation and programmes' responses to them in various ways, either deciding to participate or not. Those decisions are based on intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and the responses vary by type of institution, sector and approach.