Institutional Entrepreneurship in a Supreme Audit Institution: The National Audit Office and the use of data in financial audit

Ferry, Laurence; Midgley, Henry

Abstract

This chapter covers the development of digital technology in audit at the United Kingdom’s Supreme Audit Institution, the National Audit Office. It argues that this represented a case of institutional entrepreneurship in which often quite junior members of staff drove change. They did this using their own experiences of working on financial audit. Senior managers who were alert to the challenge of using data permitted this to happen. This case study has implications for the literature on institutional entrepreneurship, where it supports the case that entrepreneurship happens when entrepreneurs are able to mobilise rhetorical and other resources to enable change. It also has implications for the literature about Supreme Audit Institutions where it demonstrates the importance of competition with the private sector and justifications for audit excellence coming from within the profession.

Citation

Ferry, L., & Midgley, H. (2023). Institutional Entrepreneurship in a Supreme Audit Institution: The National Audit Office and the use of data in financial audit. In T. Rana, & L. Parker (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Public Sector Accounting. Routledge

• Online Publication Date: Nov 3, 2023
• Publication Date: Nov 3, 2023
• Deposit Date: May 10, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: May 4, 2025
• Publisher: Routledge
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Book Title: The Routledge Handbook of Public Sector Accounting
• Chapter Number: 4
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1618576
• Publisher URL: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003295945/routledge-handbook-public-sector-accounting-tarek-rana-lee-parker
• Contract Date: Apr 29, 2023