No abstract

This paper explores the interactions, mediations and interrogations at play by the different actors involved in the final stages of the Value for Money reporting process. The VFM auditing arena is a complex setting with groups of actors carrying out various and at times, conflicting roles. Drawing on the dramaturgical writings of Goffman, the paper examines the ways in which these actors create and manage impressions of themselves. Differences in style, tone and rhetoric are analysed to understand the way in which key parties perform to their audiences. The paper shows how the cautionary style of VFM reports is mediated with the auditees and then elaborated and improvised by the Public Accounts Committee to construct drama into the final accountability process. It is argued that through the process of writing and presenting VFM reports, auditors, MPs and auditees perform roles to manage their identities and address expectations of their audiences.

No abstract

PurposeThis paper aims to develop understanding of how the pursuit of practice change in auditing, especially in relation to audit methodologies, is conveyed, presented, reflected in and enabled (or hindered) through discursive, textual constructions by audit firms.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses an extensive series of interviews with audit practitioners, educators and regulators and a textual study of the content, concordances and narratives contained in two key audit methodological texts published by KPMG, one of the Big Four accounting firms.FindingsMajor discursive shifts in audit methodologies are identified over the last decade, with the dominant audit discourse switching from one of “business value” to one of “audit quality”. Such shifts are analysed in terms of developments in the wider, organisational field and discursive (re)constructions of audit at the level of the audit firm.Originality/valueThe identified shifts in auditing discourse are important in a number of respects. They demonstrate the significance of discursive elements of audit practice, contradicting influential prior claims that methodological discussions and developments in audit over the last decade had focused consistently on notions of “audit quality”. Methodologically, they demonstrate the importance and opportunities for knowledge development available by combining institutional, field‐wide analysis with a detailed discursive study of individual interviews and texts.

No abstract