This chapter engages with the debate over the relationship between structure and judgement. In particular, the chapter is an effort to unpack different forms of structure in order to discuss the relationship between structure and judgement in a setting where digitalisation, processualisation, and regulatory juridification affect the ways in which auditing practice unfolds. The starting proposition for this discussion rests on the idea that increased structures in auditing practice may increase demands for judgement in the auditing profession.

By collecting and analysing survey data from newly employed audit assistants at the largest accounting firms in Sweden, this chapter aims to analyse key aspects of becoming an auditor. The study investigates the characteristics of these audit assistants and to what extent their opinions coincide with the opinions of other highly educated citizens. It also investigates to what extent four value commitments of the new recruits coincide with these of senior auditors. The results show that the ones recruited today are more diverse than their older peers with respect to educational, socio-economical, and geographical backgrounds. While sharing high confidence in the universities, the legal system, and the police, the audit recruits' opinions (i.e. trust in societal institutions like the media) deviate from other citizens with higher education. The similar opinions related to auditing (e.g. professional and client commitments) indicate that the newly recruited auditors seem to already closely reflect the identity of authorised and approved auditors when being employed. They also believe that the reason for their being hired is more related to ‘soft’ skills than to ‘hard’ accounting and auditing knowledge.

Purpose - This paper aims to analyze the process of producing a reported profit number to understand how different actors overcome the tensions arising from the often conflicting value frames that apply in different situations during this process and how the actors can benefit from the ensuing friction.

Design/methodology/approach - The tensions found in the profit production process are theorized in terms of dissonance (Stark, 2009), emphasizing how multiple voices, drawing on different value frames, contribute to the search for a profit number. The authors study this by means of a case study of a large listed company in the construction industry, where, because of how judgment pervades the profit production process, the search for profit is particularly exposed.

Findings - The authors find three important value frames – caution, control and compliance – which managers, accountants and auditors draw on in the profit production process, depending on the situation they find themselves in. With this finding, the authors contribute to the previous research on financial reporting and management work and the production of profits by demonstrating how the relationships between the involved actors – primarily the auditor–client relationship – can be characterized by principled and constructive rivalry in which competing value frames can coexist alongside each other and how the dissonance created in these situations can produce generative and productive friction.

Originality/value - Previous research has mostly focused on profit measurement, taking the existence of a “true” profit number for granted. The auditor–client negotiation literature typically suggests that actors endeavor to solve situations in a zero-sum game where different value frames are present. This paper, drawing on an incipient theoretical approach to accounting research which emphasizes multivocality and perspective, contributes to the nascent research on financial accounting and management work in general and the profit production process in particular. With empirical illustrations of the dissonance found in this process, this paper suggests that tensions resulting from dissonance (Stark, 2009) may be a resource in situations like the profit production process.

International pressures on Supreme Audit Institutions (SAls) to fight corruption are increasing. Nevertheless, SAls lack a clear mandate and may appear ineffective in their anticorruption work. Using an institutional approach, this paper compares the cases of seven SAls from Scandinavian, South-European and African countries to better understand how these institutions perceive their role in fighting corruption. Our article demonstrates that the way SAls organize their work cannot simply be explained by the countries' level of corruption. Rather, efforts to fight corruption reflect the ways in which coercive, mimetic and normative pressures interact with institutional logics to guide the SAls' work. We conclude that the influence of INTOSAI still appears to be limited, and it needs increased institutional recognition if it is to be effective in harmonizing SAls' work worldwide to fight corruption.

This article analyses survey data regarding the impact of supreme audit institutions' (SAIs) performance audit on public administration in four Nordic countries. Regression analysis with pooled data from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden indicates that performance audits have positive impacts on usefulness, changes, improvements and, to some extent, accountability, as perceived by auditees who have experienced the audits. The results show that some of the factors that earlier research found important for the impact of performance audits in some countries were insignificant for all the four Nordic countries, but that SAIs' legitimacy, audit quality and consequences of media attention were important factors.

Based on an analysis of questionnaire data from a large sample of certified auditors, we examine how the main type of client being served influences auditor conformity to the core values of their profession. We contrast auditors of (primarily) listed companies with auditors of (primarily) single member companies, that is, limited liability companies with a single owner who typically is also the only employee of the company. We show that these two groups of auditors differ in the extent to which they hold certain values important (i.e., show compliance) and in the closeness with which these values are held within each group of auditors (i.e., show convergence). Our results also demonstrate that the type of client predominantly served by an auditor is relevant for explaining variation in professional values both within and between organizational contexts. In addition, we offer a new theoretical approach to classifying auditors and analyzing their commitment to core values of the profession. We analyze commitment to values via both compliance and convergence, two often overlooked aspects of conformity to value commitments in professions.

Assurance is becoming increasingly popular as a way to enhance the confidence of sustainability reports. But what does assurance of sustainability reports mean? To answer this question, the chapter treats assurance as a word with a regulatory and etymological history, which prescribes a specific and particular interpretation of the term assurance. It is observed that sustainability assurance inherits a specific theory with a particular form of evaluating and making authoritative statements on sustainability practice from (financial) auditing. The theory it draws on is agency theory, and the form of evaluation is the indirect evaluation of statements of compliance with standards instead of a direct assessment of sustainability performance or quality. The chapter suggests that this may be problematic since, although assurance may add credibility and confidence to sustainability reporting it does not challenge the perspectives taken by the company, which, it is argued, was the problem in the first place, as suggested by the Brundtland report. This theory of the practice is, however, not the only interpretation of the word audit. Drawing on alternative historical and etymological meanings of the word audit, the possibilities of other forms of sustainability audit are advanced.

Since the 1970s the Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI) have gradually expanded their role as external controllers of the public administration. Instead of merely controlling whether accounts are according to standards they have taken on a role as evaluators with a mandate to assess whether the public administration works economically, efficiently and effectively. With this new regime of external control, the question arises whether the SAIs’ control, in practice, contributes to a more efficient and effective public sector. Whether this external control will be effective depends, in the end, on the extent to which the organisations learn from the control they are subjected to and make actual changes. The chapter uses theories of cultural differences and theories on control within public administration to understand civil servant perceptions of SAI results. Data on civil servants’ reactions to the SAIs’ performance audit in four countries are analysed to see whether performance audits have any impact on the audited entities. The research is based on 696 responses to questionnaires sent out to civil servants in three different Nordic countries plus one new democracy in northern Europe, Estonia.

This study addresses the question of how accounting reliability is constructed and justified in practice. By paying attention to the translations and trials of strength (Latour, 1987) of the accounting numbers, three movements that takes the numbers through obligatory points of passage are identified and described. The three centres of calculations identified in this way betray three different, and yet all empirically important aspects of accounting reliability. Interestingly, these aspects are different from the aspects identified in other empirical accounts, where other types of accounting numbers are analysed (and empirically important). This underlines how accounting reliability is not a singular (or set of) predefined qualitative criteria inherent in well prepared accounting numbers. Instead, accounting reliability, suggests the results of this investigation, are best understood as statements about the different movements of the process of translation that leads to the construction of accounting facts.