SOAS Research Online

A Free Database of the Latest Research by SOAS Academics and PhD Students

[skip to content]

Crewe, Emma and Mowles, Chris (2021) 'Audit as political struggle: the doxa of managerialism clashing with the uncertainty of real life.' Development in Practice, 31 (3). pp. 368-379.

[img] Text - Accepted Version
Download (64kB)

Abstract

Auditing firms tend to promote rule-bound orthodoxies about management based on the fiction that the world is more predictable than it is. Managers in INGOs find that long-term planning requires endless readjustment. This article explores what happens when these conflicting knowledge regimes clash during auditing. It draws on Bourdieu’s ideas to illuminate how different forms of social capital come into play in conflicting versions of management and control, whether centralised and prereflected or distributed and adaptive. In this case, a conflict during audit was resolved through negotiation and the establishment of alliances, showing how being audited requires complex political skills.

Item Type: Journal Article
Keywords: Audit, organisations, management, politics, accountability
SOAS Departments & Centres: Departments and Subunits > Department of Anthropology & Sociology
Subjects: H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
ISSN: 13649213
DOI (Digital Object Identifier): https://doi.org/10.1080/09614524.2020.1841738
Date Deposited: 29 Jun 2020 07:47
URI: https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/33127

Altmetric Data

Statistics

Download activity - last 12 monthsShow export options
Downloads since deposit
6 month trend
44Downloads
6 month trend
168Hits
Accesses by country - last 12 monthsShow export options
Accesses by referrer - last 12 monthsShow export options

Repository staff only

Edit Item Edit Item