Auditing as a Trust Creation Process

Abstract

This paper offers an account of a process to build up relations of trust as a necessary condition for developing a new concept of auditing. The conceptual base of the discussion is centered upon the idea of managing complexity. Specifically, trust is observed not only as a form of reducing the complexity of our world relevant to each of us, but also as a most powerful amplifier of social complexity. In the paper the distinction is made between contextual trust and responsible trust. It is argued that responsible trust is necessary in order to accept diversity and increase the organization's performance in a demanding environment. This, in turn, suggests the necessity to move from hierarchical organizations to recursive organizations. The system in focus in this work was the Colombian State and, in particular, the National Audit Office of Colombia, which has begun a process to support the development of self-controlled organizational systems.