Michael Power
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198296034
- eISBN:
- 9780191685187
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198296034.001.0001
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Finance, Accounting, and Banking, Organization Studies
Since the early 1980s there has been an explosion of auditing activity in the United Kingdom and North America. In addition to financial audits there are now medical audits, technology audits, value ...
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Since the early 1980s there has been an explosion of auditing activity in the United Kingdom and North America. In addition to financial audits there are now medical audits, technology audits, value for money audits, environmental audits, quality audits, teaching audits, and many others. Why has this happened? What does it mean when a society invests so heavily in an industry of checking and when more and more individuals find themselves subject to formal scrutiny? This book argues that the rise of auditing has its roots in political demands for accountability and control. At the heart of a new administrative style, internal control systems have begun to play an important public role and individual and organizational performance has been increasingly formalized and made auditable. The author argues that the new demands and expectations of audits live uneasily with their operational capabilities. Not only is the manner in which they produce assurance and accountability open to question but also, by imposing their own values, audits often have unintended and dysfunctional consequences for the audited organization.Less
Since the early 1980s there has been an explosion of auditing activity in the United Kingdom and North America. In addition to financial audits there are now medical audits, technology audits, value for money audits, environmental audits, quality audits, teaching audits, and many others. Why has this happened? What does it mean when a society invests so heavily in an industry of checking and when more and more individuals find themselves subject to formal scrutiny? This book argues that the rise of auditing has its roots in political demands for accountability and control. At the heart of a new administrative style, internal control systems have begun to play an important public role and individual and organizational performance has been increasingly formalized and made auditable. The author argues that the new demands and expectations of audits live uneasily with their operational capabilities. Not only is the manner in which they produce assurance and accountability open to question but also, by imposing their own values, audits often have unintended and dysfunctional consequences for the audited organization.
