Purpose: The aim of this paper is to contribute to the knowledge about the diversity of credibility arrangements in new audit spaces “in the margins” of auditing and the implications of such arrangements.

Method: The paper is based on an in-depth qualitative study of the LGBTQI certification run by the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Rights (RFSL) during its first decade of business. We have interviewed employees and studied documents at the certification units within the RFSL. We have also interviewed certified organizations. 

Findings: We highlight two features that explain the unusual credibility arrangements in this audit practice: the role of beneficiaries in the organizational arrangements chosen and the role of responsibility as an organizing value with consequences for responsibility allocation of this certification. These features make it possible for the RFSL to act as a credible auditor even though it deviates from common arrangements for credible audit.  

Originality/value: The RFSL certification is different in several ways. First, the RFSL acts as both trainer and auditor. Second, the trainers/auditors at the RFSL have no accreditation to guarantee their credibility. Third, the RFSL decides itself what standards should apply for the certification and adapts these standards to the operation being audited. Therefore, this case provides a good opportunity to study alternative credibility arrangements in the margins of auditing as well as their justifications.  

This chapter sets out to do two things: to discuss international standards as a form of soft law and to demonstrate the usefulness of organization theory in doing so. International standards have received substantial scholarly attention during the last 20 years, but they have rarely been discussed as a kind of soft law, despite how well they fit the definition. Using insights from organization studies where scholars long have been theorizing about standards, we show how standards tend to dilute responsibility. Standards have a tendency to generate more organization and instead of clarifying or concentrating responsibility, it seems difficult to find anyone responsible in a world of standards. Discussing standards as an example of soft law, the framework for responsibility dilution presented in the chapter speaks to scholars also outside the realm of standard studies specifically.

Procedural planning experiments often attempt to influence how planning actors think through producing physical and social environments that affect how they feel. In this paper such experiments are conceptualized as attempts at generating atmospheric “bubbles” through the engineering of affective atmospheres. Our empirical examples show that purposeful affective engineering is very difficult to achieve – and one cannot expect that their eventual outcomes can be predicted on the basis of the ambitions that underpin them. Therefore, it is crucial to remain attentive to questions concerning the variegated, distributed and often unexpected effects of such endeavors. 

This paper investigates the role of strategic artifacts in realizing change in two Swedish cities. Drawing from qualitative studies of city development projects we illustrate how ambiguous formulations in vision statements constitute a powerful basis for legitimizing actions. As part of establishing linkages between future-oriented vision statements and concrete actions here and now, we highlight the role of materialization. We provide three examples of how the vision statements studied materialized—into organizational structures, management control systems, and communication efforts—and discuss how such materialization implies that only some parts of broad vision statements are translated into practice.

As the world becomes more and more organized, it seems ever more difficult to find anyone responsible. Why is that? We argue that the extensive external organization of organizations in contemporary society provides the key. Formal organizations are collective orders with great potential for concentrating responsibility on top managers and the organization. But when they are organized by other organizations, this potential is undermined, and responsibility becomes diluted rather than concentrated. We explain this outcome by analysing the communication of decisions as a main producer of responsibility and by defining organization as a decided order. Our analysis draws upon and contributes to research about partial organization, but it also contributes to literatures on global governance and organizational institutionalism.