Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

DOI

10.1111/faam.12439

Publication Title

Financial Accountability & Management

Volume

41

Issue

4

Pages

693-703

Abstract

Performance audits have become increasingly important across the world. Scholars know that a variety of practices are incorporated within performance audits and have mapped this diversity. However, few quantitative studies examine performance auditing as a practice. This study fills that gap. By analyzing the published performance audit documentation of the UK National Audit Office (NAO), the study explores the influences of governmental change and crises behind changes in a supreme audit institution's performance audit. It also examines whether performance audits are diverse by examining the language used by the auditors. The study provides evidence that neither crises nor changes of government have a significant effect on the overall extent of performance audit reporting. However, over time, the study does find variation in the themes of performance audit reports, with more financial themes and fewer performance themes after 2010.

Data Availability

Article states: "The data that support the findings of this study are available in NAO at https://www.nao.org.uk/reports/. These data were derived from the following resources available in the public domain:—National Audit Office, https://www.nao.org.uk/reports/."

Rights

© 2025 The Authors.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

ORCID

0000-0001-8963-8606 (McDonald)

Original Publication Citation

Michael, A., Ferry, L., McDonald, B., & Midgley, H. (2025). Performance auditing trends at a supreme audit institution: UK National Audit Office, 1999 to 2021. Financial Accountability & Management, 41(4), 693-703. https://doi.org/10.1111/faam.12439

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