This paper aims to contribute to the knowledge on how the concept of ‘collaboration’ is being produced and reproduced – and filled with meaning – as it is articulated in news content and opinion articles about the organisation of knowledge production within higher education in Sweden. We build on a textual analysis on the public discussion in the aftermath of the announcement of the research policy bill “Knowledge in collaboration” (Prop 2016/17:50) and take as a point of departure that social phenomena are constructed and given meaning through talk and texts. Our analysis shows that the concept ‘collaboration’ carry certain expectations and values concerning the organisation of knowledge production, and highlights that these ideas are not only polarised among actor groups, as well as within groups, but also contain political ambitions. The concept of collaboration can be interpreted as an idea that provides universities with prescriptions and guidelines for how to do their everyday work – what kinds of activity is valued and appropriated and what is downplayed and over time maybe even sorted out.

This papers concerns strategic management accounting (SMA) in public sector agencies. The paper focuses on the challenges of strategy formation in the public sector through an analysis of the strategizing effects of the management accounting techniques in relation to the public-sector context. The paper answers calls for studies on the strategizing effects of costing practices in the public sector in relation to other public-sector goals. The paper broadens the scope beyond cost and efficiency aspects and includes other management accounting aspects that include the role of the government and mass media in the strategy formation of a public-sector organization. The paper suggests that to understand SMA in the public sector, involves a contextual understanding of the governance system in which SMA is situated. This context includes formal governance bodies such as the government as well as other external actors such as mass media. These actors are important to bring into the analysis because their actions toward public sector agencies in many ways influence the choice of management accounting tools whose strategizing effects constitute of strategy.

The number of students in Swedish higher education has increased dramatically during the last 25 years, with a growing proportion of the population enrolled as a result. At the same time the economic inequalities in society at large has increased, indicating that these inequalities increasingly are reaching into the life of the average student. However, apart from reports on the challenges for students to make ends meet on a very general level, there is a striking lack of knowledge on where in the educational landscape the situation is particularly dire and for which students the available financial means for pursuing higher studies are especially scarce – or abundant.

The Swedish student aid system – together with the other Nordic equivalents – is generally perceived to be generous, given the universal nature of the system: all students have access to it. As a consequence, in the political as well as the scientific discourse there is a widespread perception that there are no real financial barriers for entering higher education. However, the public financial arrangement has an extensive degree of private co-funding. Apart from a minor grant the bulk of the public money available comes in the form of a universal right to take study loans.

This paper has two analytical objectives. First to examine how different modes of study financing (the specific combination of sources such as study loans, wage labour, own and inherited wealth, etc.) are distributed in the landscape of Swedish higher education. Second, to analyse how this economic distribution is related to the distribution of the formal prerequisites for entering higher education (grades and/or results from aptitude tests). Thereby the paper sheds light onto the material preconditions for acquiring meritocratic goods in a social democratic welfare regime.

Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of education serves at the main theoretical point of departure. What is the importance of economic capital – the dominant form of capital in capitalist societies according to Bourdieu – for the accumulation of educational capital? Datasets from Statistics Sweden, covering all students in Swedish higher education, are utilized to answer the posed research questions.

Independence tends to be thought of as necessary for audit quality (Humphrey & Moizer 1990;Sikka & Willmott 1995; Jeppesen 1998; Power 2003, 2011; Kouakou et al. 2013; TammHallström & Gustafsson 2014). Auditors are experts with integrity – through their capacity tokeep a distance to the practice being audited and other commercial or political influences auditorsare expected to remain independent and thereby valuable. A central belief in auditing as well asother certification services is that users of these services should find value in receiving assurancefrom someone who has the incentive to provide good quality assurance, and this quality is partlydependent on independence (Jamal & Sunder, 2011).

Auditing can be understood as an assembly of techniques linked to ideas and rationales whosecharacter may change over time. For more than a century, the audit profession has played acrucial role in defining and promoting the independence of financial audits. Through standardsdeveloped by an independent, expert-based organization the politics involved in rule setting iskept at a distance from the auditing work that supposedly is turned into a transparent, neutral and“technical” matter of comparing rule against practice. Also, auditors are disciplined throughprofessional codes of conduct to support their independence towards the auditee. Withinauditing situated within a broader field of assurance, inspection, certification, accreditation andother oversight bodies, however, the role and organization of independence may differ bothacross time and space (Gendron et al., 2001; Power, 2011). The purpose of this paper is tocontribute to the emerging debate within critically oriented accounting research about therelationship between independence and audit and more specifically about ways of constructingindependence within diverse auditing contexts. This knowledge is specifically requested by bothaccounting and certification scholars, viewing independence as a social construct and thusdependent on context (cf. Jamal & Sunder, 2011; Power, 2011; Kouakou et al. 2013).

In order to advance the knowledge about the construction of independence within auditing, wehave studied an auditing practice in the “margins” (Miller, 1998), that is, within a new area ofauditing where independence norms and practices are not given or institutionalised. Morespecifically, we have studied the LGBTQ certification developed in 2008 and run by the SwedishFederation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Rights (RFSL). The RFSLcertification differs from many other audit operations in several ways: they decide themselveswhat standards should apply for the certification and adapt these standards to each operationbeing audited; they offer training to the operations that they are going to audit; and the auditorswho conduct the actual certification have no professional affiliation (like financial auditors) oraccreditation (like certification auditors) to guarantee their independence in the context of anaudit. From an independence perspective, this might seem like an “impossible” organization, andso to explain this we investigate how the RFSL works with and justifies the organization of itscertification, as well as how stakeholders around the RFSL perceive this certification.2 In thisway, we are able to analyse and explain what the RFSL bases its credibility and its potentialindependence on. 

In this paper we analyze the role of distance in the construction of independence in financial and certification auditing. The ideal of independence tends to be regarded as a core value and the key feature for our trust in auditing services and the construction of independence has been of interest for auditing researchers for a long time. Previous studies of financial audit have shown that independence is commonly secured through the establishment of generic auditing standards. Through standards auditing work supposedly is turned into a transparent, neutral and rather “technical” matter of comparing rule against practice which, in turn, also safeguards independence in relation to the auditee. Another, complimentary way of constructing independence in financial auditing is to refer to a professional ethos, disciplining the auditor to be independent from the auditee. In the world of certifications, the idea of using a generic standard dominates and for the construction of independence to be credible, it is also important that the organization setting such standards is not the same as the organization performing the audit. Moreover, there are specific accreditation organizations auditing the certification auditors with reference to standards set by another (standard-setting) organization and by such auditing procedure granting independence for the certifier, a rational ideal of a watchdog watching the watchdog through means of organization. In sum, independence is constructed by referring to a professional ethos, by using generic auditing standards or by organizational separation. Furthermore, auditing work is supposed to avoid involvement of political and commercial interests.    

One common denominator in these independence constructions is that independence is closely connected to the idea of distance: in order for the auditor to be independent, some sort of distance is needed from the auditee. Being independent and keeping a distance from the auditee is, in turn, assumed to create trust in the audit. However, as we conceptually elaborate and empirically show in this paper, audits can gain trust in other ways than the common assumption: trust can be installed in audits even though the auditor is not clearly separated from the auditee, even though the auditing process is not made transparent by standards, even though the auditor is providing consultancy and even though the audit has a clear political agenda. By discussing ideas of independence in relation to different dimensions of distance, we contribute with new insights into how auditing practices are organized in order to be trustworthy. We also contribute with new theoretical insights to the discussion about distance and independence within both the financial and certification audit literature. 

Papret diskuterar hur en till stora delar privat granskningsapparat, med flera lager av granskare, växte fram när samhällsekonomin av- och omreglerades under 1980- o 1990-talen.

Vilka produkter ska betraktas som tillräckligt passande för att säljas? Standardiserade prövningar av produkter – certifieringsgranskningar – har funnits länge. Prövningarna görs med referens till en standard, som specificerar hur exempelvis lastpallar, tryckkärl och ID-kort ska vara utformade för att bli godkända. Detta paper intresserar sig för en särskild typ av granskning som vuxit sig stark sedan slutet av 1980-talet. Det är en certifiering där fokus inte ligger på själva produkterna, utan i stället på organisationerna som tillverkar och/eller handlar med varor eller tjänster. Vilka företag ska betraktas som tillräckligt passande för att få vara verksamma på marknaden? I dessa fall görs certifieringen med hänvisning till en ledningssystemstandard (t.ex. ISO 9001) vilket i praktiken innebär att det som granskas är de dokumenterade målsättningarna och organisatoriska rutinerna som satts upp för att leda och organisera den granskade verksamheten. Idag har över en miljon organisationer i världen ett ISO 9001-certifikat. Det signalerar att en extern certifieringsrevisor har varit på plats på företagen och gjort årliga kontroller att ledningssystemet fungerar. Men, hur ska man kunna lita på väktarna? Vilka certifieringsorganisationer ska betraktas som tillräckligt passande för att få vara verksamma att granska företag på marknaden?

En motsvarighet till den beslutade statusordning som hierarkiserar olika företag och verksamheter (certifierade vs ocertifierade) finns också för själva certifieringsbolagen. För att kunna lita på att den externa kontrollanten, certifieraren, i sitt granskningsarbete är neutral, kompetent och inte agerar i egenintressen, har ackreditering utvecklats. Genom årliga kontroller av en extern ackrediteringsrevisor undersöks om certifieringsbolagens ledningssystem är på plats och följs, en slags certifiering av certifieraren. Ackreditering är alltså en beslutad statusordning som hierarkiserar certifierarna: ackrediterade certifierare ställs mot icke-ackrediterade. Att det inte är ett okomplicerat system blixtbelyses av att ackrediteringsbranschen är upptagna med att jaga ”fejkrevisorer”, anarkistiska ”cowboys” som fortsätter att certifiera företag trots att de inte är ackrediterade.

Många granskningsverksamheter som före 1980-talet organiserades i statlig regi, som bilprovning och hissbesiktning, har avreglerats i enlighet med rådande marknadsideal. Historiskt växte alltså den privat organiserade granskningsapparaten fram i det tomrum som uppstod när staten abdikerade från rollen som granskande reglerare av olika marknader. Den statliga om- och avregleringen födde fram mer reglering, men i form av en privat beslutad sådan. Certifieringsorganisationerna är nämligen oftast vinstdrivande företag, som säljer legitimitet till andra. Även sociala rörelser har dock varit en formerande kraft när certifieringsmarknaden har expanderat till nya områden (som exempelvis certifikat för hållbarhet, rättvisa, ekologi och hbtq etc.). Utvecklingen är dock inte otvetydig. I samband med att myndigheten Swedac år 1990 startade en ackrediteringsverksamhet för ledningssystemcertifiering trädde staten åter in som överstegranskare av de privata certifieringsföretagen (en beslutad statusordning) som granskar att privata företag följer olika ledningssystemstandarder (en annan beslutad statusordning). Texten lyfter fram strategier som används för att upprätthålla dessa konstruerade statusordningar, liksom strategier som kan skymtas hos företag som väljer alternativa vägar för att försöka legitimera verksamheten.