“Biggest Scandal in Canadian History": HRDC Audit Starts Probity War

Sutherland, Sharon

doi:10.1006/cpac.2002.0522

Cited by 22 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…In other words, performance measurement is always ingrained in its own political and ideological basis -some would say bias. For example, regardless of the technocratic claims of the Auditor-General (AG) in Canada, the VFM process remains inherently political (Sutherland, 2003): the AG and the audited public organizations always negotiate the selection of evaluation criteria and benchmarks which serve as the basis of the VFM audit, creating from the start a political, not technical, relationship. A second set of negotiations occurs, and a second political relationship unfolds, once results are known, in an attempt to achieve a common interpretation (though this is not always possible).…”

Section: Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Bringing Public Organization and Organizing Back In

Gault

Demortain

Rouillard

et al. 2013

Organization Studies

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Since the late 1990s social science-based studies have allocated much less attention to public organizations. Based on the sixth Organization Studies summer workshop, this introductory paper suggests a diagnosis of such a decline as well as a research agenda. It lists some fundamental issues still to be explored such as publicness and governance. It also considers how social science-based organizational knowledge might be extended to various empirical objects and fields in public domains and set-ups such as inter-organizational arrangements, hybrid organizations, multi-stakeholder arenas, hybrid organizing, and transnationalization processes, that usually are covered by scholars -economists, historians, anthropologists, management academics, etc. -who are not using organizational theory lenses.

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Section: Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Bringing Public Organization and Organizing Back In

Gault

Demortain

Rouillard

et al. 2013

Organization Studies

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“…In auditing, the ‘expectations gap’ is the difference between what people in the community (that is, non‐auditors) think audits can do, and the kinds of assurance that audits can actually offer (Humphrey et al 1992; Power 1997). Sutherland (2003) has suggested that an especially wide expectations gap applies to public sector auditing and the work of SAIs. After observing that private sector auditors fear being blamed should they fail to identify corruption or poor performance, and they therefore seek to reduce their exposure by limiting the scope of their assurance, Sutherland (2003: 197‐‐98) argued that the opposite situation arose in the public sector:…”

Section: Seven Critiques Of Performance Auditingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Seven Deadly Sins of Performance Auditing: Implications for Monitoring Public Audit Institutions

Kells¹

2011

Australian Accounting Review

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Performance auditing is a longstanding feature of democratic government in many countries. It aims to lift the efficiency and effectiveness of public sector organisations, but numerous authors have voiced scepticism about its ability to do so. From three decades of performance auditing literature, this paper distils seven critiques of performance auditing: ‘anti‐innovation’, ‘nit‐picking’, ‘expectations gap’, ‘lapdog’, ‘headline hunting’, ‘unnecessary systems’ and ‘hollow ritual’. The paper concludes that the critiques are not valid in all cases, but serve to categorise risks to be managed in the design of performance audit programs and associated institutional arrangements. In light of the critiques, the paper proposes desirable elements of frameworks for monitoring and reporting the performance of institutions with performance audit mandates.

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“…A further capacity for change may also be evident in the point made by Eleanor Glor and Ian Greene (2002) that Canada's political culture places a particularly high value on integrity. A post-crisis policy change pattern similar to that in Walkerton was evident in the Human Resources Development Canada crisis (Good 2003;Sutherland 2003;Phillips and Levasseur 2004), 2 suggesting that Canada may exhibit strong reaction to episodes where public officials fail in their duty to ensure public safety and financial probity.…”

Section: The Politics Streammentioning

confidence: 96%

Do crises help remedy regulatory failure? A comparative study of the Walkerton water and Jerusalem banquet hall disasters

Schwartz¹,

McConnell²

2009

Can Public Adm

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This study explores whether and how policy changes in the aftermath of a crisis. The authors ask why pre-existing regulatory regimes that are identified as contributory factors to "failure" are not necessarily reformed in the wake of a crisis. The investigation adds to the literature that addresses the classic tension between reformism and conservatism in post-crisis periods. Regulatory failure is identified as being largely responsible for two crises - the tainted drinking-water tragedy in Walkerton, Canada, and the collapse of a banquet hall in Jerusalem, Israel. Despite similarities in the nature of media coverage, institutional procedures for investigation and commission findings, these two tragedies differ dramatically in policy change outcomes. A policy streams prism is used to identify, characterize and analyse reasons for very different policy responses to crises associated with regulatory failure

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“Biggest Scandal in Canadian History": HRDC Audit Starts Probity War

Cited by 22 publications

References 4 publications

Bringing Public Organization and Organizing Back In

Bringing Public Organization and Organizing Back In

The Seven Deadly Sins of Performance Auditing: Implications for Monitoring Public Audit Institutions

Do crises help remedy regulatory failure? A comparative study of the Walkerton water and Jerusalem banquet hall disasters

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