Doctoral research:
The normative frameworks of supreme audit institutions in performance audit: what do efficiency and effectiveness mean in performance audits (2002-2005)

Content of the research

Audit offices are constitutional or legal institutions, often linked to parliaments, which assess the financial transparency, lawfulness and effectiveness or efficiency of government activities and carry out financial audits, compliance audits and performance audits in order to achieve this.

Audit offices base their performance on (often implicit) normative ideas about how a government should ideally work. The aim of the study is to set out these conceptual frameworks explicitly and classify them. Setting standards is not a purely intellectual process, but it is strongly influenced by organisational and political factors. In a second, explanatory section, hypotheses are put forward on the link between the standards that are applied and characteristics of the audit offices and the environments in which they work.

Case studies of three audit offices are carried out. To address the first part of the question there is a qualitative analysis of the content of the performance audit reports produced by these audit offices, together with an analysis of other documents (manuals, annual reports etc.). To answer the second part of the question we will use the analysis of documents from audit offices and international organisations, comparative studies etc. For both parts of the study, interviews are used to complete and validate the information that has been collected.

Research team

Promotor: prof. dr. Geert Bouckaert.
Doctorandus: Vital Put