Organizing for Auditing - an essential element in governance

Financiers

The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences

Project type

Research

We live in a society that has become organized around audit, but where auditing processes and their consequences have not properly been integrated into our thinking about governance and democracy. This is problematic since auditing is likely to have significant ramifications on state performance and state legitimacy. The overall aim of this project is to develop an understanding of how auditing has been organized in the Swedish state and the consequences of this institutional development on democracy and governance. The project draws on, and integrates, two theoretical traditions: institutional organization theory and historical institutionalism.

Crucial to our research design are comparisons across policy fields and a longitudinal approach. We will conduct a series of careful empirical studies on the organizing of auditing as well as in-depth studies on auditing practices in six different policy fields. We will also compare field-specific developments with administrative reform in general. A comparison of administrative reform in Sweden, Australia and New Zealand, focusing on how the institutionalization of auditing is related to governing ambitions in these three countries, will also be conducted. The project is multidisciplinary, and involves scholars from political science, business administration and organization theory.

Anders Ivarsson Westerberg - Professor, Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences

Jenny Svensson - Associate Senior Lecturer, PhD, School of Social Sciences

Noomi Weinryb - Senior Lecturer, PhD
School of Social Sciences

Fil dr Jenny de Fine Licht, Göteborgs universitet

Professor Jon Pierre, Göteborgs universitet

Fil dr Martin Qvist External link., Stockholms universitet

Fil dr Marta Reuter External link., Stockholms universitet

Docent Göran Sundström External link., Stockholms universitet

Research area / geographic area

Social Sciences Business Studies The Academy of Public Administration Social sciences Sweden Asia Australia

Project time

2015 — 2019

Share

Facebook Mail Twitter

Page updated

31-05-2019