Efficiency audit: An assembly of rationalities and programmes

• Published in: Accounting, organizations and society organizations and society, 1998-05, Vol.23 (4), p.377-410
• Main Author: Radcliffe, Vaughan S.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Accounting; Accounting theory; Alberta; Auditing; Auditing procedures; Business accounting; Canada; Economic efficiency; Efficiency; Governance; Knowledge; Organizational behavior; Studies
• ISSN: 0361-3682; 1873-6289
• DOI: 10.1016/S0361-3682(97)00020-2

This paper focuses on the insertion of accounting and auditing knowledge into wider areas of practice, and examines the processes of auditing change through studying the development of “efficiency auditing” using events in one jurisdiction, the Province of Alberta, Canada, as an exemplar. These developments are interpreted through use of Miller and Rose's (1990; Rose & Miller, 1992) theoretical concerns with governmentality, and especially the links between generally stated political rationalities and more specific programmes for action. In studying the association of ideas of efficiency with auditing, and the developing belief that efficiency could be investigated or procured through audit scrutiny, it is argued that these events can be understood in terms of an intersection between wider discourse (concerning, for example, best management practice, appropriate auditing roles, etc.) and local circumstance. The specific interpretations that result are understood as providing one set of conditions by which auditing (and accounting are linked to the social (Burchell et al., 1985). Further research (Radcliffe, 1995) attends to the logistics of how one might audit for efficiency, using fieldwork to trace the technologies which provide practitioners with particular mechanisms for action (Miller & Rose, 1990). © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.