績(jī)效審計(jì)與公共管理改革-文庫(kù)吧資料
2024-09-16 12:29本頁(yè)面
【正文】 e these new management ideas in practice. Prima facie, it appears highly probable that there is a connection between these two phenomena: on the hand the growth of performance audit and on the other the search for a new solution to the ancient governmental problem of giving autonomy yet retaining control. Yet there seems to have been little systematic investigation of what the nature of this interaction might be. One of our ambitions is to fill this gap. We begin, in the next chapter, by looking at the boundaries and definitions of performance audit, and they move directly to describe the patterns of management reform in the five countries that form the basis for our parisons: France, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK. This provides the context against which later chapters and tease out the connections between the development of performance audit and the forces of management change. If the official descriptions are anything to go by, performance audit is not just a technical tool. It does not at all correspond to the traditional image of auditing as a process centered on ‘checking the books’ in order to see that they have been accurately and properly kept. Performance audit has a more ambitious manifesto. Its practitioners declare that they are seeking to establish whether public policies or programs or projects or anizations have been conducted with due regard to economy, efficiency, effectiveness, and good management practice. It thus brings together, in a potent new bination, the older tradition of’’ audit’ with a much more recent focus on ‘performance ‘. The exact terms within which audit bodies undertake this activity vary from country to country and over time. So we should not rush to say exactly what ‘it’ is or isn’t, but rather should problematize and explore the concept. In that chapter we will also take a brief look at some of the many other uses to which the term ‘a(chǎn)udit’ has recently been put, a diversification of meaning and practice that recently led one academic to write an ambitious text entitled The Audit Society. For the moment, however, it will suffice to say that sets of practices termed ‘performance audit’ or valueformoney studies’ have bee central activities for an increasingly powerful group of anizationsSupreme Audit Institutions. In most democratic countries, the SAI is located near the heart of the apparatus of the state. Potentially, therefore, performance audit should be of considerable political and democratic significance. It is practiced by powerful, independent institutions and is presented as a mode of investigation aimed at establishing whether, at what cost, and to what degree the policies, programs, and projects of government are working. Given these general characteristics, one might expect that the considerable munity of scholars working in subjects such as political science, public administration, public management, and public finance and accountancy would have generated a large literature about performance audit. Surprisingly, this is not the case. One may speculate on the reasons why SAIs and, within them, performance audit have suffered relative neglect as pared with, say, various aspects of public management reform. Several reasons for the apparent disparity of interest in performance audit and public management reform suggest themselves. To begin with, public management reform has been led— or at least fronted— by politicians
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