Abstract
This chapter explores how the standardizing effects of internal auditing are articulated with local idiosyncrasies in a public administration context. This investigation is based on a study of a reform that implemented internal audit in the French government administration. It shows that internal auditing changes controllers’ work, albeit in a circumscribed way; that the standardizing effects of internal audit are involved in a dialectical movement, where controllers seek their emancipation vis-à-vis external influences; and that the control of the administration is echoed by a control of controllers and of the government through internal auditing. This chapter invites us to rethink the effects of New Public Management reforms, with a higher attention paid to actors’ appropriation of constraints in implementing new managerial techniques.
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Notes
- 1.
The administration centrale, or the central administration, is composed of the ministers, their offices as well as the services attached to them (roughly equivalent to American government departments, as in the Department of Justice, the Department of Education, etc.).
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Célérier, L. (2018). Standardizing Control and Controlling Government: The Introduction of Internal Auditing in the French Government’s Central Administration. In: Mitev, N., Morgan-Thomas, A., Lorino, P., de Vaujany, FX., Nama, Y. (eds) Materiality and Managerial Techniques . Technology, Work and Globalization. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66101-8_4
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