Too big to be audited? The new world of auditing in international organizations

Abstract

AbstractWithin the NPM debate, audit reforms have been largely investigated at the national level. The best‐known theoretical approach to approach audit reforms is provided by Michael Power, who suggested the idea of an “audit explosion” and then of an “audit society.” Power draws his insights from cases situated at the national level without explicitly considering international organizations (IOs) as both subject and object of audit reforms, despite their increasing relevance in economy and society. It, therefore, makes sense to consider Power's hypotheses as a starting point for the analysis of audit reforms in IOs to investigate whether the framework has value in studying audit reforms in such organizations. This research adds to the existing body of literature by providing a comparative analysis of audit reforms in six IOs over the course of the past 20 years to shed light on a fundamentally changing method of auditing them.