Audit Society Research Articles

Audit society, organisational response and (de-)coupling: an Italian story

Audit society, organisational response and (de-)coupling: an Italian story

Understanding datafication in Swedish ECEC through three evaluation imaginaries

In this paper we explore datafication through a specific kind of evaluative practice in Swedish early childhood education and care (ECEC): the creation of quality reports by individual preschools. A theoretical framework is developed based on Dahler-Larsen's descriptions of three ‘evaluation imaginaries’ (the modern, reflexive modernity and audit society), with elaboration of their respective characteristics and complementary notions from other sources. We then apply the framework, and a qualitative text analytical approach, to analyse eight quality reports from diverse Swedish preschools, purposefully selected to represent preschools that vary in terms of ownership, geographical location, size and pedagogical profile. We find that the reflexive modernity imaginary is most clearly influential in the ECEC quality reports, but there are emerging indications of the audit society imaginary's influence. We also find variations in prioritised focus in the reports among ECEC providers, underscoring the need for further exploration. The study calls for future research to delve into provider-specific nuances, expand the investigation to other kinds of evaluations and scrutinise the broader implications for ECEC operations and practices.

Guest editorial: Special issue on the 25th anniversary of “The audit society – rituals of verification”

Guest editorial: Special issue on the 25th anniversary of “The audit society – rituals of verification”

The rise of compliance systems? The evolution of internal control through the accounting literature

ABSTRACT Compliance systems aim to prevent the commission of fraud and corruption by promoting internal procedures and ethical behaviour among individuals. This research analyzes how the existing accounting literature examines the evolution of internal control and how it can reflect the implementation of compliance systems’ features. The starting presumption of this research is that compliance systems result from a process of audit implosion in which the characteristics of the audit society influence the organisation’s internal control. New regulations turned firms out-inside by requiring internal assurance about the effectiveness of their internal control. Compliance can be considered the last step within the evolution of internal control, providing a self-oversight and ethical perspective. This paper contributes to the accounting literature by showing that compliance systems can foster the bridge between two trends of research: management control and risk management.

Coping with audit society pressures: a review of NGO responses to funder accountability demands

PurposeThis paper aims to extend some of the theoretical propositions of Michael Power’s (1997) audit society thesis by exploring the capacity of organisations to push back against external accountability pressures. The paper positions the literature on non-governmental organisation (NGO) accounting and accountability as a “case study” against which the notion of the audit society is put to the test.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative meta-synthesis of the accounting literature is used to analyse how NGOs have responded to audit society pressures – most notably funder pressures to adopt formalised accountability mechanisms. The different responses of NGOs to funder accountability demands are analysed using Christine Oliver’s (1991) typology of strategic responses to institutional processes.FindingsThis review of the accounting literature unveils that NGOs can adopt a range of strategic responses to funder accountability pressures that vary from passive conformity to proactive manipulation. The findings confirm that NGOs often perceive acquiescence to funder accountability demands as necessary to ensure organisational survival. Yet, the author also found that NGO resistance to funder accountability pressures is more common than previously assumed. Five dominant forms of “accountability resistances” emerged from the analysis: evading accountability, disguising accountability, shielding accountability, negotiating accountability and shaping accountability.Originality/valueBy conducting a qualitative meta-synthesis of the accounting literature, the author was able to integrate the findings of prior research on NGO resistance to funder accountability demands, guide future research and extend Michael Power’s (1997) work by developing a more nuanced understanding of how organisations respond to external accountability pressures.

Creating accountability through HR analytics – An audit society perspective

This paper introduces an accountability-based perspective of the effects of implementing HR analytics. Considering central arguments about HR analytics' potential to transform HRM and using research on the audit society and concepts from critical accounting research, we develop a framework that analyzes the emergence of three forms of accountability in HRM: accountability through exposure, design, and connectivity. The paper contributes to research on HR analytics by identifying three forms of accountability in HRM that result from implementing HR analytics and by determining how they influence how HRM is understood, how HR practices are augmented, and how HRM's status in organizations can be improved.

“He Hears”: An essay celebrating the 25 year anniversary of The Audit Society

This paper is a reflection upon The Audit Society and how, 25 years after publication, it has since shaped thinking and research in audit, accounting and accountability. We first discuss the book’s impact in the context of its publication, and highlight the key messages that the book helped to impart. Second, within the broad scope of the book, we focus upon one of its central themes, ‘making things auditable’. We explore how this early idea was productive of an organizational and sociological understanding of audit and auditing practices, and the reasons why it might still be so. In suggesting this, we travel from the book’s macro-structural elaboration of the ‘audit society’ towards a micro-processual analysis of ‘auditability’. We consider in particular two recent works by Power (2015, 2021), and outline their import and future potential in connecting three central themes of audit research: the constitution of the ‘objects’ of audit, auditees’ subjectivities and ‘dispositions’, and the ‘logic’ of the audit trail and audit performativity.

The intersection between ‘The Audit Society’ and public sector corruption and fraud: – a literature review and future research agenda

PurposeThis paper aims to explore how the phenomena of corruption and fraud in the public sector have been portrayed in the literature using the Audit Society Framework (Power, 1997).Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a structured literature review (Massaro et al., 2016) to unveil relevant literature in the area of corruption and fraud in the public sector.FindingsResults highlight that the literature using “The Audit Society” theory is still scant. Notwithstanding the call for a more decisive role of auditors in fighting corruption and fraud, much is still to be discovered about consequences of auditing and what “good quality” is.Research limitations/implicationsThe main limitation is that only literature in English has been included.Practical implicationsThis paper helps practitioners and policymakers to take and implement informed decisions with regards to the fight against fraud and corruption.Social implicationsIn calling for more research in the domain of audit, fraud and corruption in the public sector, this paper promotes a higher focus of society on public interest and the common good.Originality/valueThis paper investigates one part of The Audit Society related to corruption and fraud, topics that are still very underdeveloped and unexplored by researchers. From the findings the authors suggest possible new avenues for further research.

The end of audit. Spectacle and love in the audit society

Purpose A total of 25 years of research on the audit society has provided rich and engaging accounts of the ways in which rituals of verification have conditioned organizations and individuals to think and act. In contrast, this paper aims to explore the possibility of conditions through which things and spaces are enacted to be non-auditable. Design/methodology/approach Using the concept of proliferation and rarefaction (Callon and Law, 2005), the paper adopts a case-comparison design to explore two empirical sites. The first investigates a vast excess of audit structures against the case of the biggest corporate fraud in German accounting history, the Wirecard scandal. The second discusses the configuration of Tinder, the most popular provider of mobile dating and the absence of visible verification mechanisms. Findings The paper argues that things can become non-auditable through two mechanisms. Based on the two empirical sites, non-auditability can happen through an overload of auditable resources or, through the withdrawal of required resources. The paper discusses the consequences of this finding and suggests avenues for future research on non-auditability. Originality/value While accounting scholars have extensively addressed the audit explosion and traced how audit practices have journeyed into ever more novel terrains, this paper discusses forms of escape from the value-subverting and reductive accounts incorporated in the audit society. It thereby points to conditions under which accounting ends.

Theorizing the Economy of Traces: From Audit Society to Surveillance Capitalism

This essay is a conversation between Shoshana Zuboff’s theory of surveillance capitalism, Mikkel Flyverbom’s conceptualization of the hyper-visibility afforded by digital architectures, and my own ‘analog’ theory of accounting dynamics in the ‘audit society’. Drawing upon trends in accounting practice and research I develop a number of inflection points which define theoretical tensions between the concepts of audit society and surveillance capitalism. These tensions suggest that theoretical innovation is required in the face of: the accelerating constitution of organizations by platforms and their processes – ‘platformization’; the constitution of human agents as data-driven subjects of these data architectures – ‘cyborgization’; and the reconstruction of the social sciences by a pervasive data positivism in which accounting becomes ‘accountics’. The exploration of these three inflection points reveals the deep operational logic of surveillance capitalism as an ‘economy of traces’ and traceability. Zuboff’s challenge of a political dystopia governed by technology giants and Flyverbom’s image of a society ‘overlit’ by digital architectures necessitate a re-specification of the audit society dynamics that I have previously theorized. The re-specification that I propose in this essay is a form of a critical ‘traceology’ which takes as its focus the ongoing production of all manner of traces and how they make up organizations, people and forms of knowledge.

Afterword: Audit Society 2.0?

Purpose The purpose of this study is to briefly reflect on the continuing relevance of the arguments of “The Audit Society” thesis after 25 years and to consider whether they need to be adapted in the face of advances in digitization. Design/Methodology/approach This essay develops a series of critical reflections on the main arguments in “The Audit Society” (Oxford University Press, 1997). Findings There is a need for critical accounting and management research to explore how audit society themes require adjustment in the face of “surveillance capitalism” and how the boundaries between accounting, security and surveillance are becoming blurred. Originality/value This essay is a personal and self-critical account of the genesis of The Audit Society thesis which looks forward to how this thesis can develop. It also offers a defence of the value of books in enabling the travelling of ideas across fields.

The influence of Power’s audit society in environmental and sustainability accounting

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to reflect upon the contribution of the Mike Power’s Audit Society and associated papers from the 1990s to the (then) emerging field of environmental accounting. The paper also looks forward to how these seminal ideas are influenced by accounting in the Anthropocene, as examined in more recent sustainability accounting literature.Design/methodology/approachThis is a reflective essay, drawing from the broad sweep of social, environmental and sustainability accounting literature.FindingsThe performativity of accounting and audit, as it pertains to the practices of environmental audit and sustainability reporting, is clearly evident, with Power’s work contributing significantly to this conceptualisation. At the same time, there is also a material dimension to this process. Indeed, distinguishing first and second-order risk (drawing from Power and others) is a critical and ongoing task for sustainability accounting.Originality/valueWe suggest that the Anthropocene offers challenges to the notion of the performativity of audit and reporting.

The audit society: opening up a meaningful epistemological agenda

PurposeThis paper aims to bring to the fore some conditions of possibility surrounding the audit society thesis that might have contributed to construct a sense of distinctiveness around it, thereby facilitating its spread and travel in the accounting research community (and beyond) as a meaningful epistemological agenda.Design/methodology/approachMy argument is that the aura of distinctiveness surrounding the audit society thesis as a noteworthy epistemological agenda relates to outsider influences, concept plasticity, and in-depth persuasiveness. I discuss these three features of distinctiveness through excerpts from the book and my own interpretations, the whole analytic process being circumscribed by a disciplined imagination exercise (Weick, 1989).FindingsWhile the webs of unpredictability surrounding social life necessarily influenced the travel of the audit society thesis in academia, it seems to me that the thesis’ journey may have been helped by the author’s outsider status, the malleability of the thesis’ key concepts, and the medium (as a book) through which the thesis was articulated (which provided a persuasive platform to underline and demonstrate the depth of the argument).Originality/valueIn an age where journal rankings abound, the audit society thesis constitutes a telling demonstration that one can have a meaningful impact in setting an epistemological agenda and consolidate her/his scholarly reputation through the publication of a scholarly book.

Audit society goes viral: the rise of the online auditor

PurposeThis paper aims to consider the impact of Michael Power’s (1997) Audit Society thesis for understanding the rise of audit logics in the virtual world.Design/methodology/approachThe paper reviews some of the key concepts in Audit Society and discusses them with reference to the role of the user review.FindingsThe paper argues that user reviews are an illustrative example of Audit Society in the online world, with notions of independence, measurability and expertise being deployed to create a sense of comfort and trust.Originality/valueThe paper enhances our understanding of the impact of Audit Society on everyday lives with particular reference to the lives of the digital citizen.

My self-reflection on the importance of Michael Power’s book The Audit Society to my research and interest in auditing

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the implications that Power’s book had to the author’s research in public sector auditing.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, the author reflects and debates the inspiration that Michael Power’s book The Audit Society had on the author’s own research.FindingsThe author finds that this book had a significant influence on how he succeeded theorizing his studies on auditing, and how he could contribute to the audit literature. It is stunning how the book succeeded in synthesizing audit research, encouraging scholars to understand auditing as a social practice, i.e. how auditing can be theorized using various social science theories and how the book also appealed to broader social science.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper is a reflection that covers around a 20-year period with potential mis-representations of how exactly sequences of actions and thoughts were.Practical implicationsThis paper helps to clarify how it is that audit operates and influences everyday life of persons involved with auditing.Social implicationsThis paper casts doubts as to what actions are carried out in the name of audit and that audit is not just a value free activity but involved with political agendas.Originality/valueThe originality of this paper is that it fleshes out how a seminal book can have significant implications on how research is carried out.

Competitive exposure and existential recognition: Visibility and legitimacy on academic social networking sites

AbstractOver the past decade, academic social networking sites, such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu, have become a common tool in academia for accessing publications and displaying metrics for research evaluation and self-monitoring. In this conceptual article, we discuss how these academic social networking sites, as devices of evaluation that build on both traditional values, objects, and metrics in academic publishing and on social media logics and algorithmic metrics, come to fulfil a need in the current academic (publishing) ecosystem. We approach this issue by identifying key affordances that arise in the interaction between platform and user. We then position these affordances in relation to potential needs of academics in today’s publishing landscape by drawing on Hafermalz’s metaphor of the ‘fear of exile’, which provides an alternative way of understanding the importance of visibility in the networked world, as a combination of competitive exposure and existential recognition. We end by considering the grounds on which the platforms may be attributed some level of legitimacy. This is done in order to understand the inherent contradiction between the broad use of the platforms and the fact that their integrity has been questioned repeatedly. We seek an answer to a legitimacy for the platforms in the fact that a pragmatic, mutual benefit exists between them and the research community; a benefit that is enhanced by the audit society influencing current academia.

The termination of central government internal auditing and the emergence of the innovation society

AbstractFor over two decades, the literature has characterized contemporary Western societies as audit societies. These societies are characterized by an approach to governance that is shaped by the idea and practice of auditing. This paper shows that with regard to public governance, the audit society has started to give way to a program of government innovation, or what we theorize to be the emergence of a new form of society: the innovation society. The paper builds this theorization on a longitudinal case study of the past 40 years of Danish central government administrative policy developments with a focus on internal auditing. The paper shows that internal auditing has transitioned from being a macro actor of public governance to becoming a micro actor and ultimately terminated. The paper further shows that this dissociation process was instigated not by elected politicians but by highly positioned civil servants who managed to remove what they identified as an obstacle to the stability of the innovation program.

Reaching up and out: the audit society

PurposeThis paper aims to show how The Audit Society was oriented towards, not just accounting scholars but also towards social scientific enquiry more broadly.Design/methodology/approachThis is a reflective review of the impact that Mike Power’s The Audit Society has had on social science.FindingsThe authors find that The Audit Society successfully built conceptual bridges “up” and “out” towards other social science disciplines.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors highlight the importance of theorizing “up” and “out” for present day accounting scholars.Originality/valueThe authors offer a personal reflection on The Audit Society which has influenced the own study in various ways.

Public Servants’ Values and Mental Mediatization – An Empirical Study of Swedish Local Government

Public servants’ value dispositions is a central theme of inquiry in Public Administration research. Various trends and reforms in the public sector, New Public Management, the audit society, marketisation and mediatization, for example are expected to affect these values. This article analyses whether, and in what ways, mediatization affects public servants’ values. Drawing on survey data from local government officials, we explore the mediatization thesis at the level of individual public servants using the concept of mental mediatization. Regarding their values, we empirically establish a dominance of organizational professionalism rather than democratic professionalism among local government public servants. We then analyze mediatization at the level of individual public servants in local government, in contrast to previous research which has focused on the mediatization of politics and central government. While finding an interesting gap between strong beliefs in, but little self-assessed impact of, mediatization, the article rejects an expected correlation between mental mediatization and public servants’ value dispositions.

Сложность самосознания науки

The widespread use of bibliometric indicators in science management, associ­ated with the ideology of pseudo-economic positivism, is not only a specific tool for evaluating the work of scientists, but also a serious challenge to the self-con­sciousness of the scientific community. After a while this simplified language becomes the usual language of a scientist’s “self-observation”. At the same time, the expansion of this language meets with increasing resistance that is mani­fested not only in publications of individuals but also in declarations of authori­tative organizations. Science should find a way to give appropriate response to the challenges of the “audit society”. Philosophy of complexity considers the self-consciousness of science as a complex organism, as a system containing a lot of subsystems, that develops under influence of many internal and external factors, is necessary for this purpose. It implies the development of “science of science” (SciSci) as a complex discipline within there would be a real interac­tion between the philosophy of science, history of science, sociology of science, scientometrics, psychology of scientific creativity, economy of science, studies in policy in science an legal regulation and legal aspects of scientific activity.