Suchergebnisse

AbstractThe value of auditing as an instrument of accountability depends upon the independence of auditors. However, the extent to which auditors feel free to review the operation, compliance, and performance of public programs and objectively communicate findings to stakeholders has rarely been assessed. A Canadian public service reform in 2006 introduced institutional safeguards to bolster the independence of departmental internal auditors, but left legislative auditors working for the Auditor General's Office (i.e., Canada's Supreme Audit Institution) unaffected. We analyze and compare 2677 audit reports written by internal and legislative auditors before and after the reform. After the reform, the language used by internal auditors became more assertive and evaluative, but not more critical. This suggests that the safeguards had a meaningful impact on how auditors perform their accountability function but that factors other than independence may be driving their willingness to be more adversarial and critical when communicating audit findings.

AbstractSince the 1980s, many governments expanded their administrative oversight systems, such as auditing and evaluation, in order to improve the efficiency, performance and accountability of their administration. Yet few studies empirically examine this "audit explosion." Our study investigates its more recent manifestation. Using Canada as an exploratory case, we first assess whether the level of these oversight activities contracted or expanded in the last two decades. We then analyze the contents of 3245 audit reports published between 2000 and 2019 to track changes in the focus of auditing. Results suggest that, while the overall level of administrative oversight is much higher now than in 2000, it grew only in the first decade of the millennium and was confined to internal functions, namely departmental audits and evaluations, as opposed to the country's Supreme Audit Institution. Meanwhile, auditors' attention to financial matters declined, while their focus on compliance, performance, and risk increased.

AbstractTransparency is largely seen as essential to public sector accountability. Yet, information disclosure also generates unintended consequences that may prove detrimental to the workings of some accountability processes. In this light, we investigate the views of Canadian public sector internal auditors, a subset of professionals fulfilling an important accountability function. We show that concerns surrounding disclosure requirements are prevalent. We demonstrate that internal auditors who see public disclosure requirements as a barrier to their effectiveness are more likely to be and/or perceive their organization to be risk averse, to feel professionally isolated and to favour a greater role for data analytics in accountability processes. However, auditors who would like to see their profession play a greater advisory role in their organization view public disclosure in a more positive light. We argue that understanding who is resisting helps identify threats to accountability mechanisms, improves the design of transparency policies and facilitates implementation.

Firms devote increasing funds and resources to cause-related marketing (CRM). This report seeks to uncover some of the factors that explain how firms choose between competing social causes in the development of their CRM strategy. The behavior of firms traded on the London Stock Exchange is analyzed, by highlighting regularities and patterns in CRM activities. The rationales for the observed patterns are investigated through semistructured interviews with managers employed by UK-based nonprofit organizations, financial services, and retail firms. The authors identify, among other things, differences in the nature of the "selected" social causes, the length and geographical scope of the social campaigns, and the (CRM) strategies used to implement them. It is argued that these variations may reflect differences in the organizational legitimacy pressures experienced by firms in the retail and financial services sectors.

For the past 20 years, the field of production and operations management (POM) has tried to establish itself as a discipline distinct from operations research (OR), management science (MS) and industrial engineering (IE). Sceptics argue that POM has failed to develop its own body of literature, lacks a distinct intellectual structure and that there is little appreciation of what it stands for. In this paper we use bibliometric techniques (a factor analysis of co‐citations) to investigate the intellectual pillars of the POM literature and explore whether these are distinct from those commonly associated with its rival fields. We also use simple non‐parametric techniques to show that the research agenda of European POM scholars differs substantially from that of their North American counterparts, and argue that such transatlantic differences may have exacerbated the difficulties POM has experienced in developing as a respected academic discipline.