Abstract
ABSTRACTComplexity, a key issue in accountability research, is almost coterminous with modern governance. Increased complexity is a key external contingency driving analyses of public administration. Scholars often conclude that “traditional” forms of centralized accountability and control are no longer feasible in the face of complexity, but at the same time, internal audit in government, as a form of centralized accountability and control, is expanding its scope. This apparent paradox is addressed by means of mixed research methods focusing on how internal auditors in government understand and cope with complexity. The article demonstrates that auditors do so by hybridizing values and through professional and relational anchoring of practices. The results suggest that public administration scholars should not write off centralized control in complex systems of governance. The article also suggests that new accountability issues arise, relating to professional autonomy and influence inside government.
Highlights
Complexity and modern governance are closely connected, almost coterminous, concepts (Kooiman, 1993; Osborne, 2006; Schneider, 2012)
While increased complexity at the macro level supposedly makes central control and accountability problematic, the meso-level practice of internal auditing is blossoming. How can these contradictory assessments from different but closely related disciplines be understood? Could it be that the macro-level claim of increased complexity is overstated and exaggerated? Or, could it be that the meso-level practice of internal auditing turns a blind eye to the macro-level complexity of its surroundings? In order to understand the linkage of macro-level complexity with meso-level accountability and control inside government, this article analyzes how internal auditors experience and cope with the complexities of auditing in government
The public sector has more generally grown in complexity, according to many other scholars, and this is said to mean that traditional centralized forms of accountability and control are no longer feasible
Summary
As most scholars on the subject would argue, is a far from unambiguous concept that denotes complex, multifarious, and partly contradictory practices and expectations (Bovens et al, 2014). The mean response was fairly high at 3.8 (where 3 is neutral and 5 is full and strong support); only 6% of the respondents did not find the issue relevant (at all) This suggests that organizational and processual complexity was as expected, a relevant challenge for internal auditors. 3.91 3.56 3.48 4.27 3.90 4.19 3.79 3.08 3.80 professional opinion and the specific purpose of the survey stand out from the others; the specific demands of the commissioning principal (in the Netherlands formally the administrative leader of the department), professional norms, and the political salience of the issue were very important for internal auditing This is interesting in the sense that the practical implications of these values can be quite contradictory. Some values (see above) are consistently more important than others The rank order of values (see above) depend on specific settings Multiple values are recombined into new, encompassing, values [no – see text] [no – see text] [yes – see text]
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