EFFICIENCY AUDIT - AN ASSEMBLY OF RATIONALITIES AND PROGRAMS

This paper focuses on the insertion of accounting and auditing knowled ge into wider areas of practice, and examines the processes of auditin g change through studying the development of ''efficiency auditing'' u sing events in one jurisdiction, the Province of Alberta, Canada, as a n exemplar. These develop ments are interpreted through use of Miller and Rose's (1990; Rose & Miller, 1992) theoretical concerns with gover nmentality, and especially the links between generally stated politica l rationalities and more specific programmes for action. In studying t he association of ideas of efficiency with auditing, and the developin g belief that efficiency could be investigated or procured through aud it scrutiny, it is argued that these events can be understood in terms of an intersection between wider discourse (concerning, for example, best management practice, appropriate auditing roles, etc.) and local circumstance. The specific interpretations that result are understood as providing one set of conditions by which auditing (and accounting) are linked to the social (Burchell et al, 1985). Further research (Rad cliffe, 1995) attends to the logistics of how one might audit for effi ciency, using fieldwork to trace the technologies which provide practi tioners with particular mechanisms for action (Miller & Rose, 1990). ( C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.