Financ Acc Manag - 2022 - Liston%E2%80%90Heyes - Institutional embeddedness and the language of accountability Evidence from 20.pdf (1.26 MB)
Institutional embeddedness and the language of accountability: evidence from 20 years of Canadian public audit reports
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-15, 20:38 authored by Catherine Liston-HeyesCatherine Liston-Heyes, Luc JuilletDue to the expansion of the mandate assigned to public auditors in the past decades, audit reports have become more prominent indicators of the quality of government. Accordingly, it is important to investigate the factors that shape the communication of audit findings. We suggest that, while internal and legislative auditors belong to the same community of practice, they are also embedded in distinct institutional environments that incentivise them to report their findings in different ways. In particular, we hypothesise that, in order to draw attention and mobilise support for their work, legislative auditors are encouraged to use a language that is more negative and emotive than internal auditors. Applying methods of computational text analysis to a corpus of 3245 audit reports produced in the Government of Canada between 2000 and 2019, we present empirical evidence in favour of these hypotheses. Amongst other things, our findings provide large-sample evidence that, despite comparable professional norms and guidance, public auditors are sensitive to their institutional context and, in response to their environment, resort to rhetorical strategies to either amplify or mitigate the reputational risks associated with their reports.
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Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Published version
Journal
Financial Accountability and ManagementISSN
0267-4424Publisher
WileyExternal DOI
Page range
1-25Department affiliated with
- Management Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2022-05-30First Open Access (FOA) Date
2022-08-17First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2022-05-29Usage metrics
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