CENTRAL AUDIT INSTITUTIONS AND PERFORMANCE AUDITING - A COMPARATIVE-ANALYSIS OF ORGANIZATIONAL STRATEGIES IN THE OECD

The New Public Management supplies a rationale for broadening the mand ate of external audit institutions to encompass performance auditing. This article examines conceptual, empirical, and managerial issues rai sed by external performance auditing. Conceptually, performance auditi ng is a misnomer for a class of mainly evaluative review activities. E mpirically, OECD countries vary in terms of the specific types of perf ormance audits conducted by their principal external audit bodies. Exp laining such variation offers some insight into the contemporary polit ics of public management policy. Managerially audit bodies whose manda te includes performance auditing confront two major strategic issues: whether to conduct such evaluative reviews in an auditing style and wh ether to gear their work to achieving performance improvement in audit ee organizations.