300002 The Audit Society - Lektürekurs (S) (SoSe 2017)

In the past thirty years, public organisations have been faced with a flood of evaluation, transparency, and quantified performance measures. In 'The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification', Michael Power considers this phenomenon more closely. He observes that regulatory practices of auditing, which originate in the financial sector, have gradually expanded to other social fields, and he seeks to determine the preconditions, causes, means, effects and prospects of the new audit-based relation between administration (auditor) and organisation (auditee) that this has brought about. Over the years, Power’s monograph has become a standard reference point for organisational studies about evaluation, control and economisation. While the book has been rightly praised for making unusual empirical material accessible to a wider sociological audience, it has also been criticised for keeping its theoretical premises mostly implicit.

In this reading course, we will closely read and discuss 'The Audit Society' as well as parts of Power’s subsequent book 'Organized Uncertainty'. In a stepwise fashion, we explore some of the theoretical premises of Power’s diagnosis and follow up on the possibilities of and limits to generalising his insights. What is the relationship between trust and auditing? Can auditing be rightly described as a sophisticated form of surveillance? And what aspects need to be factored into our analysis when we apply concepts of interactional accountability to the level of inter-organisational relations? These are some of the central questions that we will address in this reading course.

Requirements for participation, required level

The dates noted above are options for our seminar sessions. We will use the first meeting on April 19th to discuss and finalize the schedule in accordance with students' interests. Therefore, attendance at this first meeting is a requirement for participation.

Bibliography

Power, M., 1997: The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Power, M., 2008: Organized Uncertainty: Designing a World of Risk Management. Oxford: Oxford University Press.