Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 971–987

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Accounting, Organizations and Society

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/aos

Public sector auditor identities in making efficiency auditable:

The National Audit Office of Denmark as independent auditor
and modernizer
Peter Skrbk
Copenhagen Business School, Department of Accounting and Auditing, Solbjerg Plads 3, DK-2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark

a b s t r a c t

This paper examines how the National Audit Office of Denmark (NAOD) manoeuvred in
making the Danish military receptive to a performance-accountability project in the period
1990–2007. Evidence is provided from a detailed case study, where the actions of the audi-
tors have been followed in their efforts to make the military activities auditable by focusing
on the multiple and dynamic interactions between them, the auditee and others. This study
contributes to our understanding of how auditors manoeuvre with their performance audit
devices in different ways to make efficiency auditable. It appears that as the auditee initi-
ated the implementation of a new accounting system called DeMars a stream of overflows
threatened to destabilise it. Groups within the auditee were eager to put heat into the over-
flowing. This study illuminates how the auditors, equipped with their devices of purifica-
tion in the later stages of the project, helped at least provisionally to contain the overflows
and stabilize the construction. Due to such different manoeuvres by the auditors, this paper
demonstrates the problems that emerge when state auditors manoeuvre in performance
auditing with identities both as ‘modernizers’, i.e., participating in providing the reasons
for change and defining its designs and as ‘independent auditors’, i.e., to legitimize the con-
struction in which they participated themselves. Many allies to the auditors worked hard
in protecting the NAOD as the two identities conflicted with each other during the execu-
tion of the project.
Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction
In consequence of New Public Management (Hood,
1995) and the emergence of performance auditing as an
increasingly influential force in the public sector, numer-
ous Auditors’-General Offices have sought to ensure that
their activities are consistent with, and supportive of, pub-
lic sector reforms (Funnell, 2003; Gendron, Cooper, &
Townley, 2001, 2007; Guthrie & Parker, 1999; Power,
1997, 2003a). Thus, auditors came to realize that they need
to engage more closely with the auditee (Pollitt, 2003;
Power, 2003a). Such engagement has contributed to a drift
in the activities of public sector auditors increasingly
becoming involved with policy making, which is not with-
E-mail address: ps.acc@cbs.dk
out its problems (Gendron et al., 2001). Later Gendron et al.
(2007) analysed the strategies of auditors to become recog-
nized as possessing expertise aligned to NPM and Funnell
(2003) described the conditional influence of audit from
a case where the NSW Auditor-General Office was criti-
cised when engaging in performance auditing. Pollitt
(2003, p. 159) noted that there are great variations in the
degree to which performance auditors consult with audi-
tees and concluded that we need to know more about
how Audit Offices develop their roles.
Despite these significant contributions little is still
known of accounting processes in action (Burchell, Clubb,
Hopwood, & Huges, 1980) and in particular of what kind
of manoeuvres auditors become engaged in when being
in action (Power, 2003a; Robson, Humphrey, Khalifa, &
Jones, 2007).

0361-3682/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.aos.2009.01.001
972 P. Skrbk / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 971–987
This paper seeks to further contribute to our knowledge
on how performance auditors manoeuvre when being in
action. More specifically, it turns attention to how the
National Audit Office of Denmark (NAOD; hereafter, the
‘‘Office”) became involved in a specific project to make
public sector efficiency auditable in the Danish Defence
Forces (DDFs). It illuminates the actions and what it means
in terms of their identities when seeking to initiate and
stabilize, a performance-accountability project called
DeMars.
This research is based upon a detailed and processual
case study of an implementation that heavily involved
the Office for more than 18 years and caused a lot of heated
debates also in the press. As such, this case offers excellent
opportunities to study how the Office manoeuvres (i.e. act-
ing) with shifting and conflicting identities as ‘independent
auditor’ and ‘modernizer’. The ‘modernizer’ identity char-
acterizes the role of the Office as one of change agents that
seeks to gain ground for change and to influence the de-
signs of the consequent accounting system. The ‘indepen-
dent auditor’ identity characterizes the role of the Office
as one that manoeuvred to purify the system that it has it-
self participated to develop. This paper is concerned with
understanding how the Office manoeuvred with these
identities in protracted and heated processes of making
the project at all feasible. To anchor performance audit
knowledge in the auditee’s accounting systems, it involves
processes to generate an actor-network of innovation:
These moments constitute the different phases of a gen-
eral process called translation, during which the iden-
tity of actors, the possibility of interaction and the
margins of manoeuvre are negotiated and delimited
(Callon, 1986, p. 203).
Innovation involves the construction of a network of
entities that are enrolled to support the innovation in var-
ious ways. During such processes the entities – such as the
auditors – and their margins of manoeuvre and identities
are also negotiated and delimited. The auditors become a
part of translations, where network partners such as the
auditee, the parliament and other government units partic-
ipate in negotiating and delimiting their identity. Thus, it is
demonstrated in this case that the collective efforts of
making things auditable involves negotiations of the audi-
tors’ identities and their manoeuvres as to what they can
do, and what they cannot do. This is seen in relation to
three themes; ‘making new things auditable’, ‘the identi-
ties of auditors’ and ‘auditor reports as devices of
purification’.
The findings of this paper are significant for a number of
reasons. Firstly, it contributes to the growing literature on
how Audit Offices in various countries engage in perfor-
mance auditing or other NPM reforms. It does so by provid-
ing a detailed and processual case study of how the
auditors participated in the production of making a specific
accounting innovation at all feasible. Secondly, it provides
insights into the manoeuvres of auditors to anchor their
knowledge base (i.e. costing principles) in the auditee’s
accounting systems. Thirdly, it develops knowledge about
how the identities of the Office, the auditee and others
are interrelated with one another during programme exe-
cution, especially paying attention to the obstacles and
overflowing of the execution. Finally, it contributes by pro-
viding insights into how performance audit reports are
developed to facilitate different purposes during the
execution.
This paper is organized as follows. Section two next dis-
cusses the literature on performance auditing and making
the public sector auditable and presents actor-network
theory for the study of auditors’ manoeuvrability. Before
starting up the analysis, the case based method is outlined.
The following section describes the organizational and his-
torical context of the DDF and ends up outlining the major
events of the DeMars project. Then, in four subsections, the
story of how the DDF’s military activities were made audit-
able is told with a specific emphasis on the auditors’
manoeuvring in the network. Finally, the findings of the
analysis are summarised and related to extant debates in
the literature and implications for future research are
discussed.
Accounting innovations, auditor manoeuvrability
and identity
In much of the extant literature, auditors have been
portrayed to manoeuvre usually in the role as ‘independent
auditor’. However, as Power (1996) suggests in his seminal
article, ‘Making Things Auditable’, audit is an activity
involving two main types of processes: the negotiation of
a legitimate and institutionally acceptable knowledge base
and the creation of ‘environments being receptive to this
knowledge base’ (p. 289). These statements draw attention
to the case that auditability is an achievement that presup-
poses actions. As Power (2003a) later phrases in a general-
ised sense ‘auditability must be constructed as a series of
acceptable and legitimate techniques’. However, when
characterizing the process of making things auditable as
one of ‘fact building’ he mainly characterizes the auditing
process as one where auditors apply various (mainly statis-
tical) methods to verify the data of various disclosures.
Similarly, when it comes to the matter of anchoring, the
audit knowledge base in a specific performance measure-
ment system and the question of who does the work it
has more to do with accountants and consultants, rather
than explicitly with auditors. As it appears, auditors are
portrayed primarily as going into action when the mea-
surement systems are installed and ready to provide data
for the auditing process.
Heated debates about auditor independence have
accompanied NPM reforms. Traditionally, state auditors
have been known as manoeuvring with the identity as
‘independent auditors’ but due to NPM in several countries
they have developed facilitation of ‘economic, efficient and
effective’ public administration in efforts to increase inter-
nal and external accountability. For Audit Offices to con-
duct performance auditing with the aim of transforming
the public sector towards external and internal account-
ability, it is useful to create a knowledge base in the mate-
rialised form of White Papers, reports, memos, etc. that can
be circulated to the auditee. Such documents are closely
related to policy making, which in the public sector is com-
 P. Skrbk / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 971–987
monly understood as being organized by Treasuries or
Ministries of Finance. And when being put in circulation
to greater sets of audiences, documents may under certain
conditions participate in creating ‘environments receptive
to audit’. But what specifically are these conditions? What
activities are needed to advance and technically anchor
such knowledge bases within accounting systems and
other organizational arrangements with the auditee? And
of particular interest to this paper, how do they involve
auditors?
Gendron et al. (2001, p. 288) conducted research pri-
marily on how a performance audit knowledge base was
legitimized and found that the audit office, as it moved clo-
ser to NPM, used its annual report as a medium to socially
construct (widening) auditor independence boundaries by
invoking ‘‘discourses and narratives to affect audiences’
perceptions and behaviors”. Their findings suggest that
Audit Offices can move the boundaries regarding indepen-
dence and the activities in which state auditors can engage.
In response to such debates, Power (2003b, p. 199)
points out ‘‘It should be recognized that a certain degree
of auditor dependence on the auditee is desirable and nec-
essary”. More recently, in a related approach Gendron et al.
(2007) have focused on developments in auditors’ exper-
tise in their efforts to expand their body of expertise to
new jurisdictions. They found that state auditors were
developing ‘expertise’ to guide and implement NPM re-
forms, among other things, such as the installation of per-
formance measurement systems. Such contributions
inform us that auditing is subject to change and auditors
are involved with efforts to expand and stabilize audit
knowledge bases, methodologies and technologies with
auditees. Further, we note that audit is influenced by the
environments in which it operates and that it constructs
those environments while interacting with the auditee
and others. However, to ensure the development of soft
practices, such as making public sector ‘efficiency’ audit-
able, into hard and objective practices is a costly and time
consuming endeavour. Such attempts may even be resisted
and remain controversial (Power, 1996, 1997).
A more recent strand of auditing research takes up
Power’s idea of how the audit process and changes in the
knowledge base and expertise influence the identity of
the auditors. Robson et al. (2007) show – in the private sec-
tor – how some auditors became involved in expanding
their knowledge into new areas of business risk auditing
emphasising their efforts to mobilise an associated knowl-
edge base and how it renegotiated the auditors’ profes-
sional identity into one of ‘business advisers’. Being
inspired by such an approach I now set out to develop
the framework from which to describe and characterize
how the Office’s identities are negotiated and delimited
during its participation in the performance-accountability
project in the DDF.
Actor-network theory and the theorising of auditor
manoeuvrability and identity
Actor network theory offers a possibility to study
accounting innovations due to its emphasis on various
technological innovations and how they are made feasible.
973
In my descriptions, I draw upon the notions of manoeuvra-
bility and identity that are integral to the moments of
translation and the notions of framing and overflowing.
In organizing the case account, I draw upon Callon’s four
moments of translation: ‘‘problematization”, ‘‘interesse-
ment”, ‘‘enrolment” and ‘‘mobilisation” (Callon, 1986). Fol-
lowing Callon’s problematization, it describes a system of
alliances, or associations, between entities, for instance,
being organizations or social groups, such as professions,
thereby defining their roles to play, i.e. their identities
and what they ‘want’ (Callon, 1986, p. 206) in the develop-
ment of the network. In the moments of ‘‘interessement”
the instigating actors attempt to impose and stabilise the
role and identity of the other actors. To achieve interesse-
ment ‘‘various devices are used to implement such actions”
(Callon, 1986, p. 208). Callon defines the moment of
‘‘enrolment” to be, ‘‘about multilateral negotiations, trials
of strength and tricks that accompany the interessements
and enable them to succeed” (Callon, 1986, p. 211). Briefly,
this moment is about how easily the identified actors let
themselves enrol. Problems of enrolment add considerably
to the dynamics of the network interactions by initiating
further work on interessement devices to smooth enrol-
ment. The last moment ‘‘mobilisation” is a matter of,
‘‘who speaks in the name of whom” (Callon, 1986, p.
214) and how the enrolled entities can transform them-
selves into active support or betray the construction as dis-
sidents. In Callon’s distinction between entities and
spokespersons lie the possibilities to conceive of organiza-
tions or larger social groups, such as professions, as entities
in the name of which a few spokespersons act. To speak in
the name of others is typically achieved through a series of
displacements involving the work of experts like that of
auditors.
In the auditing literature developed from Pentland
(1993) and anthropology,1 Power (2003a, p. 385) points
out, primarily having financial auditing in mind that ‘‘audit
is a process of purification culminating mainly in the ‘clean’
audit opinion for outside consumption”. Strathern (2006)
has similarly raised attention to the case that audit may con-
tribute to the smooth running of organizations by its power
to purify the principles of organisations. This may also in-
clude accounting technologies anchored with the auditee.
To develop this idea, and going back to Latour (1993, pp.
10–13), it is argued that purification is not separated from
the processes of translation, rather it should be seen in the
context of the hybrid networks of humans and non-humans
‘‘. . ., since purification is considered a useful work requiring
instruments, institutions and know how. . .” (Latour, 1993,
p. 78). Purification is an active process where someone
establishes a zone, in which things get de-politicised by
claiming independency and expertise, like that of an audit
office. Callon (1991, p. 134) points out that texts, such as
1
For a long time, purification has been a theme in several areas of
research. In anthropology (Dougherty, 1998; Douglas, 1966), it is demon-
strated that purification is a process of establishing distinctions between
state of affairs where those distinctions centre on being either pure or
impure. In sociology, Foucault (1990) describes and criticizes the case that
sciences such as medicine implied purification by the codification of sexual
behaviors and what is permitted and what is forbidden.
974 P. Skrbk / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 971–987
(auditor) reports, are intermediaries which he defines as
‘‘anything passing between actors which defines the rela-
tionship between them”. In moments of intermediaries
being put in circulation among actors they come to (ac-
tively) define, explore, stabilise, and test their identities
against one another. In contrast to the extant audit literature
with its focus on financial auditing, in this paper I follow
how performance auditors perform the work of purification
to accounting innovations by erasing the mess of practice.
An integral feature of these four moments of translation
is the concept of identity. It relates to the network of inter-
actions in which actors get involved. Callon’s notion of
identity, therefore, becomes a relational one. It becomes a
matter of studying both how socio-technical programmes
can be seen as attempts to define group identities and then
how the individuals, with their self-concepts as Empson
(2004) would say, become reconfigured
In short, the actor’s ontology is variable: his or her
objectives, interests, will and thus identity are caught
up in a process of continual reconfiguration, a process
that is intimately related to the constant reconfigura-
tion of the network of interactions in which he or she
is involved (Callon, 1998b, p. 253).
The concept of identity illuminates the question of
‘what it is you want’, ‘how we should act’, and how this
is influenced when being in interaction in socio-technical
networks. Identity reconfigurations, as also Hübner
(2007) reminds us, are taking place significantly in infor-
mal interactions – therefore more difficult to analyse –
than the publicly communicated impressions. Identity
reconfiguration is a negotiation. Negotiations take place
when individuals are engaged in interactions performing
with a certain identity. When individuals or organizations
perform with a certain identity they do that in front of an
audience. Depending on the responses of the audience, the
identity of the performer is left open, for instance, for ap-
plause, scepticism or direct critique or whatever kind of
feedback.
The strength of actor-network theory is that physical de-
vices are seen to participate in the interactions and identity
reconfigurations. But the devices and the way they perform
to users as audiences may also be of relevance to the inter-
actions under study as is also pointed out by Czarniawska
(2000). When entering into such negotiations it helps us
to explain what it is that is at stake as interactions generate
conflicts and become hot as well as explaining what actions
are initiated to achieve identity aspirations. Identity is fun-
damental to the way individuals make sense out of their
lives, how they want to live it and how they deal with obsta-
cles that confront their aspirations. The argument is that the
reconfiguration of identities relates to various (technologi-
cal) innovations being initiated in actor-networks between
and within organizations. When Empson (2004, p. 763)
mentions ‘‘that managers are organizational members in
their own right, their organizational aspirations will be
bounded by the existing organizational identity”, this can
be developed by pointing to the case that social groups,
such as auditors, and their identities are negotiated and
delimited by the dynamic interactions of the socio-techni-
cal networks of which they become part. Robson, Khalifa,
Humphrey and Jones (2007) in their constructivist study
share the same interest when being concerned with how
the expansion and negotiation of audit expertise that re-
lates to new audit technologies influence the auditor’s pro-
fessional identity, or more generally the identity of
accountants (Ahrens & Chapman, 2000). The more active
and dynamic use of the concept of identity and how physi-
cal devices participate can provide actor-network-based re-
search in accounting and auditing with valuable insights on
how technologies and social groups’ identities are reconfig-
ured in the mutual sets of interactions.
In Callon’s (1998b) work on the notions of framing and
overflowing, he further develops the possibility to theorise
how various accounting and audit technologies participate
in the framing of group and individual lives. The point is
that accounting and audit technologies together with fur-
ther devices play a role in establishing the ‘cognitive
boundaries’ that define and delimit the sets of possibilities
for interaction ‘‘The frame establishes a boundary within
which interactions – the significance and content of which
are self-evident to the protagonists - take place more or
less independently of their surrounding context” (Callon,
1998b, p. 249).
The cognitive boundaries for the employees of the au-
dited organization may change in various ways when audi-
tors and others, initiate changes in accounting and auditing
technologies. When employees such as civil servants are
asked to report on certain issues as part of new audit pro-
cesses they are being mediated upon by various technolo-
gies and so influences are exerted on their work life and
their occupational identity.
However, to ‘make things auditable’ through construct-
ing accounting innovations also involves sets of other de-
vices. The whole framing cannot succeed without
substantial investments in devices such as white papers,
guidelines, laws, auditor reports and statutes. Recalling
the four moments of translation, framing is the result of
the outcome of the interactions relating to each of the four
moments.
Behind the need for the work of purification are the pos-
sible problems of enrolment that may be due to ‘unin-
tended consequences’. This term has been widely used
within the accounting and audit literature (see, for in-
stance, Power, 1996, 2003a; Sikka, Puxty, Willmott, & Coo-
per, 1998). As Giddens (1984, p. 11) says ‘‘philosophers
have used up a great deal of ink attempting to analyse
the nature of intentional activity”. The word ‘intention’
also raises a philosophical debate on what is intentional
and what is not. Instead Callon suggests the term ‘over-
flow’, which is his sociological revision of the economists’
concept of externality. Overflows bear similarities with
the term ‘obstacles’ in Callon’s work on translation. The
concept of overflowing refers not just to the positive or
negative externalities – terms coming close to ‘unintended
consequences’ – produced during the framing attempts,
but also to the additional political actions that may be gen-
erated by reflexive agencies concerned with the externali-
ties produced. Agencies that develop feelings of being
excluded and not listened to may add to the dynamics
and complexities by problematizing the constructions. In
this way the perspective opens for the possibility of agents
 P. Skrbk / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 971–987
being transformed from passive objects to active subjects
that may try to counteract the constructions in (for them)
intended ways.
A variety of overflows are produced when calculative
agents are trying to make things auditable. Instead of
describing imperfections as ‘accidental’ like economists
do, Callon sees an overflow as a phenomenon that is not
unexpected, but rather the norm and unavoidable. To
phrase it differently, framing is the production of order
while overflows are the production of disorder, and both
are produced simultaneously. But it is not enough to iden-
tify them, it is also necessary to identify who is responsible
for them and who is affected by them (Callon, 1998b, p.
257). Overflows are something that calculative agencies at-
tempt to contain as they otherwise will threaten the fram-
ing attempts. Callon’s framing and overflowing concepts
supplement his work on translation and in particular allow
for a richer examination of the sort of disorder produced
simultaneously with the attempted production of innovat-
ing a new order. In contrast to the concept of ‘unintended
consequences’, overflows and reflexive agencies are at the
very centre of analysis and not just a residual or ‘by-prod-
uct’ as Strathern (2002) puts it. The concept of overflows
adds to the complexity and dynamics of achieving order
and allows for a richer description of how innovations
are made feasible.
In operationalising actor-network theory for this study,
the four moments of translation constitute the core of the
framework to examine the ways in which the perfor-
mance-accountability project is made feasible and how
the Office manoeuvres during the execution of the project.
However, the four moments should not be seen as reflect-
ing calendar time since in reality they can overlap (Callon,
1986). Thus even though mobilisation is the last moment
in Callon’s analytical structure, mobilisation and the inci-
dence of possible betrayal may in real time occur at differ-
ent points in the life of the accounting innovation under
study, suggesting that the four moments are not fixed
chronologically. The twin notions of framing and overflow-
ing are closely interrelated and also overlapping with the
four moments of translation. Both notions relate in differ-
ent ways to the four moments. The notion of framing can
be seen to relate to all the four moments since it is the mo-
ments in total that determine the outcome of the network
interactions and thereby the framing that is achieved. The
notion of overflowing relates mainly to the problems of
attaining enrolment, and the work of purification to secure
mobilisation of the spokespersons of the accounting inno-
vation. In summary, the description is guided by the ques-
tions how did the auditors manoeuvre to make the
performance-accountability project at all feasible; and,
how was the Office successful in these efforts?
Method
Being inspired by actor-network theory and the anthro-
pology of science and technology (Callon, 1998a) I draw on
a detailed and longitudinal case study. The origin of the
fieldwork dates back to 1996 when I was as an associate
professor in accounting at Copenhagen Business School in-
975
vited together with an academic colleague to teach officers
at the Royal Danish Defence College in accounting. After
some time, I realized that the Office had launched a num-
ber of audit reports on the DDF’s accounting systems. As
a teacher, I was asked to provide case examples related to
DDF activities, but there were no such cases in Denmark.
However, I had been given some performance audit reports
on the DDF, which I used for teaching purposes from 1997
to 1999. As a result, I became interested in the Office’s cri-
tique of the DDF and its accounting systems. They criticised
the DDF for being unable to provide cost calculations with-
out using ‘arbitrary’ cost allocations (Rigsrevisionen, 1996).
Cost allocations are by nature arbitrary and the critique
stimulated my interest in ‘‘what is going on here”. In
November 1997, an officer closely related to the proposal
to initiate a performance-accountability project gave a
speech at the Defence College. From this speech it appeared
that some DDF officers believed it would be feasible to de-
velop a comprehensive cost allocation system without
arbitrary cost allocations. The speech caused a heated de-
bate among the officers. In this way, I was present in ‘real
time’ before, during and after it was decided by the Parlia-
ment to start the performance-accountability project. Hav-
ing established many relationships with the officers
through my 4 years of teaching at the Defence College, I
was able to follow many of the discussions including the
debate in the newspapers within the DDF. Over the years,
I have also collected many articles from DDF’s own work-
place letters and periodicals to illuminate attempts to ex-
plain to the employees the rationale of the project.
Consistently with actor-network theory I substantially
base my extensive fieldwork on a lot of texts (Callon,
1991), among these, the paperwork produced by the Office,
the DDF, the MoF and the press. These texts include White
Papers by the MoF, other White Papers by the DDF, audit
reports, audit notes by the Office and correspondence be-
tween the DDF and the Office. I was granted access to the
archive of the Ministry of Defence (MoD), where these
source documents are stored. In addition, I use various
laws (the Danish constitution, the Danish National Audit
Office Act, the PAC Act) that were mobilised in discussion
at various moments.
In the beginning of my study I was troubled by the Of-
fice’s reports since they were difficult to understand. They
seemed to contain truths beyond question and the writing
style seemed very bureaucratic (Radcliffe, 1999) with a le-
vel of pathos that can be characterized as extremely low
(Justesen & Skrbk, 2005). However, to begin theorising
the 15 audit reports and notes as the devices of problema-
tization, interessement, enrolment and mobilisation it ap-
peared that their designs were different and they served
different purposes and interests.
To supplement the observations and texts, from 2002 to
2006, I conducted 17 semi-structured interviews, each last-
ing approximately two hours. In all cases, there was an ano-
nymity agreement. Ten interviews were transcribed
including the interviews with a representative from the Of-
fice, the instigating officers at the DDF, other officers, the
chairman of the PAC, two consultants, one representative
from the Ministry of Finance (MoF) and a journalist. Six
interviews were not taped but reported. In addition, I have
976 P. Skrbk / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 971–987
used field notes from informal conversations with officers
and others. All of these different empirical sources have, in
the data analysis, been used to reconstruct the chain of
events relating to the accounting innovation and the auditor
manoeuvrability. The main purposes of the interviews were
to sort out the flow of events and actions, as well as to under-
stand the roles of the actors, their interests and what kind of
problems they could identify in relation to the project. The
multiple empirical sources have been used to cross-validate
the major events and what actually happened.
The organizational and historical context of making
the DDF receptive to the accountability project
The Office is placed under the parliament and refers to
the PAC. Some well-known Danish politicians, ministers
and prime ministers have been the members of the PAC
at one point in their political careers. The Office conducts
the practical audit work. Since 1976, the Auditor-General
of Denmark manages the Office. During the 1990s the main
focus changed to conducting reviews of management
accounting systems as the second order auditing within
ministries and government agencies. This development ap-
pears to be parallel with the MoF’s efforts to implement
the government’s ‘modernization programme’, which was
introduced in 1983. As a part of this programme, the MoF
published a range of papers - known as the SØS-publica-
tions – with new standards for conducting management
accounting drawing on general elements of NPM dis-
courses. The Office referred to these publications as audit-
ing premises (the knowledge base) for the conduct of
performance auditing. Later in 1999, the Office published
its own document ‘Excellent governmental management
accounting’, which forms part of the ‘knowledge base’
(Power, 1996). The MoF and the Office have variously
pointed to the need for government agencies to calculate
and disclose unit cost information.
The issue of independence also relates to the Office. The
National Audit Office Act states ‘‘In its activities, the Audi-
tor-General acts independently” S. 1, (3). Even though the
meaning of the text is a bit ambiguous, it uses the term
independence, which corresponds to the general expecta-
tions that the Office is an independent body to assure and
check whether expenses have been used in accordance with
legislation and appropriations have been used with deliber-
ate attention to economy, efficiency and effectiveness. This
development is reflected in their public communications as
outlined on their Internet page ‘‘the Office is the indepen-
dent control body of the government. By auditing state
funds, it contributes to encouraging an efficient and legal
administration” (Internet page, January 2008). In the very
same statement, they also communicate the impression of
being ‘‘objective, professional and responsible”.
The Auditor-General can decide to initiate specific
audits, but often the parliamentary Finance Committee or
members of parliament also put pressure on the Office to
conduct audit reviews in cases involving a heated debate
on various policies. In order to demonstrate independence
from the government and the parliament, the PAC’s Inter-
net page emphasises that it is only the PAC that can request
the Office to conduct certain audits. When describing an-
other important aspect of the audit regulations it appears
from the Office Act, S.18, (2) that ‘‘within four months of
completing the (Ed. audit) report and two months after
the PAC has forwarded the audit report, the minister will
make a statement about the measures and considerations
caused by the report” (italics added). Thus, the law states
that it is compulsory to suggest that specific measures are
taken (i.e. to initiate proper actions to meet critiques). Since
it is up to the auditee to suggest measures the Office can in
principle avoid presenting recommendations and delimit
themselves to just pinpoint criticisms. Officially, it is the
minister responsible for the audited agency who forwards
a note to the PAC. Afterwards, the PAC writes a statement
that is printed in the final audit report. Even though there
have been a few debates about the Office and also its orga-
nizational affiliation to the parliament and the PAC, the Of-
fice has ever since 1975 been granted a high level of
legitimacy in its audit activities. The Office reports and
PAC conclusions are regularly being quoted by the press
without critical debate about the reports themselves. Only
rarely is the Office or PAC being criticised publicly.
From the beginning of the 1980s, the Office and the PAC
conducted several audit activities within the DDF. The DDF
was deeply engaged in the Cold War and this meant that it
was a place of high secrecy. Several times the DDF referred
to security issues when rejecting the need for increased
transparency. Over the years, the PAC became increasingly
annoyed with the lack of reforms. PAC members were very
active in encouraging the Office to increase its audit efforts
within the DDF. One of them - a member of a party against
militarism – is quoted by an officer for stating at the end of
the1980s ‘‘of all the audit cases, only the DDF is still not in
order”. Another highly influential social democrat, and for-
mer Minister, stated while she was the acting chairman of
the PAC that after the Berlin wall had fallen, there was no
excuse for not conducting a thorough audit of the DDF. The
general political ‘climate’ also played an important role in
the audit processes of the DDF. As an officer points out
‘‘At the time in the late 80’s, it was a widely held assump-
tion that we did not need the DDF” (officer).
On the organizational context of the DDF it appears that
the correspondence between the Office and the DDF in-
volves both the MoD to which the audit correspondence
is directed and the Defence Command Denmark that after-
wards receive it from the Ministry. The centre for develop-
ing the DeMars project is located in the Defence Command
as a unit above the weapon arts: navy, army and air force.
The last historical issue which became linked to the la-
ter developments of the DeMars-project relates to the
development of IT-systems in other parts of the State. In
the Danish Job Centre a large IT-system called Amanda
was developed at the same time as an IT-system developed
in the Danish Ministry of Education known as the VUE-
system. Both systems were approved by the Finance
Committee of the parliament but ended up severely mal-
functioning with huge budget overruns. Both cases raised
concerns in the Finance Committee when the DDF applied
for funding to develop DeMars. It is this organizational and
historical context that leads up to the development of
DeMars.
 P. Skrbk / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 971–987
1995, 1996, 1999, SAP
DeMap- DeMars A/S chosen
Group Group as software
settled settled provider
1989 –1996, 1998, Document 140
NAOD and MoF
approved by
reports Finance Committee to
problematizing the
initiate the DeMars-
accounting systems project
of DDF
Fig. 1. Major events of the DeMars-projects.
The case account starts in the late 80s with NAOD pub-
lishing reports criticising DDF accounting systems. Those
activities led to the formation of the DeMap-group in
1995 that worked to develop a programme of total cost.
In 1996, the DeMars-groups was formed and together with
the DeMap-group they created the Document 140 to be
approved by the Finance Committee of parliament. The
DeMars-group chose in 1999 SAP Ltd. to be the provider
of the ERP-system SAP R/3. In 1999 and 2001, NAOD com-
mented on the designs in DeMars that officially came in
use in 2004. NAOD evaluated the DeMars-project in the
periods 1999–2002 and 2005–2006. A time line of
the main events is presented in Fig. 1 as a summary of
the above historical exposition.
Auditor manoeuvres and making the DDF’s military
activities auditable
Problematization
After the Berlin wall came down in 1989, the Office was
ready to fulfil the wishes of the PAC to strengthen the audit
activities within the DDF. The whole process was opened
with an audit of the overall management accounting
system within the DDF. According to the report (9/91),
the audit’s purpose was to ‘‘analyse and assess whether
the management accounting within the DDF mirrors the
requirements that can be defined for modern public sector
accounting” ( Rigsrevisionen, 1993, p. 7). In their review,
they found that the DDF’s accounting system, at the time
called ‘FØRST’, failed to provide ‘‘trustworthy information
on productivity” (p. 11). Implied in this idea of generating
productivity measures and unit costs is the challenge of
defining end products as cost objects. During the Office’s
work on the report some officers were sceptical about
the whole idea of identifying the military activities as
‘products’. The auditors concluded in their report that it
is not difficult to produce ‘‘accounting information related
to products and production means or to define end prod-
ucts or support products for the DDF” (p. 10).
The Office continued to demand that the DDF should in-
crease their efforts to define ‘‘products and activities that
can be measured in quantitative terms” (p. 10). In this
report, the use of IT-systems also came under scrutiny.
977
In 1999 and 2001, 2007 -
the NAOD DeMarsstill
commented on the under
designs in DeMars development
May 2004,
1999 –2002, 2005 –2006,
SAP R/3 NAOD reports NAOD reports
system
positively Positively
officially in times on the on the
use
effectiveness effectiveness
of DeMars of DeMars
The Office concluded that the FØRST-system ‘‘is not suc-
cessful in terms of management control, productivity
measures and cost information” (p. 11). As required by Of-
fice Act S. 18, (2) the auditee must make a statement about
various measures. These measures have already been
presented to auditors before the closure of the report.
The DDF is quoted in the report for promising to set up a
number of committees to evaluate ‘‘the relations between
financial accounting, cost management, productivity
measures, external and internal accounts (reports) and
information systems” (Rigsrevisionen, 1993, p. 11).
The DDF’s promise to let committees assess the possi-
bilities for developing the accounting systems did not
seem to impress the PAC, who in their comments to the re-
port stated ‘‘The PAC expects real measures rather than
committees and plans” (p. 51). The pressure was enforced
by another audit review to problematize the Army’s
accounting systems. The link between the earlier report
9/91 (Rigsrevisionen, 1993) and this newer report 15/92
(Rigsrevisionen, 1994), can be seen from a statement on
p. 9 ‘‘there is a need to systematically analyse the DDF
and the Army’s measurements of production” (italics
added). Also, the Office disapproved both the overall IT-
system FØRST and the Army’s IT-system.
The reports gained additional weight from yet a further
report from the Office. In its annual report to the parlia-
ment, it stated that ‘‘there is a need for new accounting
systems within the DDF” (Rigsrevisionen, 1994, p. 13).
Meanwhile, multiple memos and letters were written be-
tween the Office and the DDF. Also, the MoF supported
the problematization in letters criticising the DDF for its
lack of modern accounting systems. The pressure on the
DDF was growing, but due to their identity as independent
auditors, the Office could not start initiatives themselves.
They had to rely on entities within the DDF.
During the heated debates in 1993–94, a couple of offi-
cers within the Defence Command Denmark (the head-
quarters of DDF) were beginning to think of possible
solutions to the unavoidable request. These senior officers
had the obligation to write answers to the continued cri-
tiques presented by the Office and the MoF. They thought
that adjustments could be made to the accounting systems
that are already in place. However, in moments of contin-
ued critique they became frustrated and began to think in
terms of accounting systems used in private companies.
978 P. Skrbk / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 971–987

Officers Top management DeMap-group The National Finance The Public Ministry of
Entities group in the Audit Office of Committee of Accounts Defence
Defence Denmark the Danish Committe of (Minister)
Parliament the Danish
Parliament.

OPP/ That the Sharing OPP:DeMars, To convince the top That the That the NAOD's That no scandals
possibilities for responsibility and Total cost. management of the system does image as the appear because it
Obstacles military activities risk with MoF and Can officers DDF and to keep not collapse Parliament's gives the minister
are not NAOD them on 'track'. and become independent problems towards the
be convinced auditors is not Parliament
destroyed due to of the a scandal
accounting damaged.
'principle of
total cost'?

Goals of
entities/ Manager To demonstrate To implement Modernizer The efficient To help NAOD in its Compliance with
and Warrior modern DeMars to help the
Identities management as DDF to get rid of
approval of audit activities. Men of pressures from
investment restoring order NAOD/MoF and PAC.
strategists NAOD/MOF proposals
criticism. as MPs.

Fig. 2. The DeMap/DeMars-networks: obstacles and OPP = obligatory passage points.

When looking to the private sector they realized that many
Danish companies were implementing SAP R/3. If private
companies were doing so, the DDF could do the same,
and that when having done so, the DDF would avoid fur-
ther critiques. Being supported by the Chief of Defence
and the MoD, the DeMap-group was formed so as to define
the ways in which an accounting system could be devel-
oped. This work ended up in a programme called the´ prin-
ciple of total cost’ as the obligatory passage point.
In Fig. 22, the entities of the DeMars network are summa-
rised with respect to the types of entities that are identified
as network partners. The DeMap-group ended up perform-
ing the role as being the instigators that could help handle
the critiques emerging from the Office and MoF by leading
the work to implement the new ‘principle of total cost’.
But the group did not delimit the programme by identifying
themselves as being the only parties interested in it. They
also identified the MoF and the Office as having interests
in being alliance partners as modernizers during the execu-
tion of the programme. Further, in close collaboration with
the MoF and the Office, they identified additional entities
with certain roles and identities. Among them were the Par-
liament with its Finance Committee MPs seeking to realize
their interest in modernizing the administration and realize
increased accountability; the MoD seeking to get rid of Of-
fice criticisms; the DDF’s top management hoping to demon-
strate that the DDF has excellent management accounting
systems; and, the officers attempting to manoeuvre with
the identity as ‘manager’ together with the identity as
‘warrior’.
But for these entities with predefined aspirations, a ser-
ies of obstacles lay ahead. Will the programme overcome all
sorts of conceptual and technical problems of configuring
2
This figure is an developed version of Fig. 2 in Skrbk & Thorbjørnsen
(2007).
the future IT-systems? Will officers (eager to acquire mili-
tary expertise) find the manager role attractive? Will the
DeMap-group succeed in convincing officers of the ‘princi-
ple of total cost’? Will the Finance Committee (eager to
avoid public scandals) stop the programme before it is fin-
ished? Will top management (eager to retain authority with
officers) take steps to stop the project, or will the MoD’s civil
servants (eager to protect the Minister of Defence) stop the
programme? These obstacles and related overflowing must
be overcome in order to stabilise the programme. To lock
the allies into place a whole range of different interesse-
ment devices are developed (Callon, 1986).
The devices of interessement
The devices of interessement are, according to Callon
(1986, p. 207), formed and adjusted only during action.
One contentious issue that came up early in the process
was the identification of ‘products’ as cost objects. When
officers were thinking in terms of ‘products’ they instantly
began thinking in terms of exercising sovereignty over the
Danish territory, eventually by fighting wars or being pres-
ent with arms. But it was quite clear that Denmark had not
recently fought so many wars so it did not make much
sense to measure martial outcomes in a formal system.
Additionally, it was problematic to measure the number
of potential enemies who were abstaining from developing
interests in attacking Denmark.
But when the DeMap-group came under hard pressure
from the Office, it facilitated the identification of the edu-
cated forces as cost objects and quantification became pos-
sible. For example, how much ammunition and hours at
the shooting range were used in the training programs?
Thus the unit cost of educating a soldier, a group, a battal-
ion, a regiment can be calculated and the costs of different
units could, in principle, be compared.
 P. Skrbk / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 971–987
The ‘principle of total cost’ became transferred to the
DeMars-project which set out to invest in an ERP-system
(SAP R/3) to anchor the programme into a technological
arrangement. In the system, and more precisely in the
Enterprise Controlling module, a wide range of military
and administrative units became defined. With such cate-
gories, the inputs and outputs could be recorded and allo-
cated to units, purposes and places enabling unit costs to
be calculated. Officers, other soldiers and civilians were re-
quired to register all sorts of events in the system. Hun-
dreds of computers were being distributed among offices
and many IT-consultants were hired to programme the
SAP R/3 software to fit with these categories and establish
links between the various parts of the system. Costs of re-
sources now had to be recorded and allocated to the de-
fined cost pools and the use of different support
products, stock fluctuations and so forth had to be
recorded.
Further interessement devices such as many different
guidelines for various actors participating in the running
and use of the system were made. In addition, training in
the guidelines was also held to make sure the users do
the right things, such as entering the correct accounts
and entering the numbers in the right sequence. Without
the substantial and almost endless sets of investments in
such devices the whole framing of the network and the
identified actors would not have been feasible.
From the ERP other identities emerged, for instance,
that of a ‘super user’. Super users are persons trained in
using the SAP R/3-system, who know the technicalities of
how to change categories, to print reports and communi-
cate with yet other ‘system operators’. Officers up to the le-
vel of captains were being trained as super users. As
implementation progressed, sergeants and senior ser-
geants were also being transformed into super users in this
way assisting higher ranking officers at battalion level who
operate as managers. With the possibility of printing all
sorts of reports to report on all aspects of performance,
meetings could be arranged to accommodate interactions
among officers (as superiors and/or budget holders), con-
trollers, accountants, internal auditors and even auditors
of the Office. The officers in such encounters need to dem-
onstrate accounting expertise.
During these processes of interessement, the Office
was not passively awaiting the final result. For instance,
in an audit report (3/98) the Office followed the imple-
mentation of various parts of the system. In this report,
they reminded the DeMars-group of certain things,
among them that ‘‘It is the view of Office that it is of vital
importance, that the making up of productivity and effec-
tiveness is based upon consistent and reliable sets of data
(Rigsrevisionen, 1999, p. 56). In a stream of later reports
they also commented on the use of a risk management
system (Rigsrevisionen, 2001), the initiated training and
plans of education (Rigsrevisionen, 2005) in this way par-
ticipating in the construction of the interessement de-
vices. However, despite these efforts to fix the identities
of officers and others involved in the innovation, success
is never assured (Callon, 1986, p. 211). For the innovation
to succeed, identified entities must let themselves enrol
into the construction.
979
Processes of enrolment
To ease enrolment involves further processes of negoti-
ations and tricks. Physical violence, seduction, transaction
and consent illustrate the different possible ways in which
the actors are enrolled (Callon, 1986, p. 214). Actors such
as the Parliament, the PAC, the MoF and the MoD were
more or less easily enrolled into the construction. How-
ever, the officers were not. From the very beginning there
was severe scepticism among officers at all levels towards
the project since it required them to be equipped with a
computer to conduct various accounting tasks and to per-
form with the new hybrid identity as ‘warrior and man-
ager’. But what types of multilateral negotiations took
place to ease enrolment of the officers?
From the very beginning of the problematizations of the
Office some officers found that the Office was forcing the
DeMars-project and not acting as an ‘independent auditor’,
which in itself produced overflowing.
There was an auditor in the Office who in 1991 con-
cluded that there was disorder in the DDF’ public
accounts. This was totally wrong. We could prove that
he was wrong. We had followed the instructions (SØS-
publications), which were actually just guide lines from
the MoF in every detail. We had a fight with him for
more than a year. He was almost convinced, but said
he was expected to find ‘something’. We found that
the Office was a highly non-democratic institution. . .
we were forced to accept a premise that was not cor-
rect. They actually interfere and indirectly become
involved in politics. In this way, they may actually vio-
late the Danish constitution, according to which the
Office shall be an independent body. I considered writ-
ing about this in the press, but I never did so (officer).
The DDF could not avoid taking the critique serious
since the Office’s Act S. 18 stipulates that the auditee (the
Minister of Defence) is required to make a statement about
measures and considerations. The officer here criticises the
‘knowledge base’ upon which the Office claims its exper-
tise justification. He refers to the SØS-publications, which
in his view have no legislative status. They are just White
Papers or guidelines that have not been approved by the
parliament. Therefore, he found that the Office was making
its own rules, which he saw as being illegal in a democratic
sense. However, we see that the Office became closely re-
lated to the government’s modernization programme such
that it could manoeuvre within the DDF to ‘modernize’ it.
However, the officer cited above saw such manoeuvring
with an identity as ‘modernizer’ as being in conflict with
the Office’s identity as being an ‘independent auditor’.
As soon as officers began to engage in preparing them-
selves for operating with the new hybrid identity as ‘war-
rior and manager’ they became very critical of the whole
idea of transforming the DDF into a ‘manufacturing’
company
The Office was trying to develop models that were
meeting the request for providing unit costs, i.e. to
manage the DDF as a manufacturing company. As soon
as we said that, we offended many of my colleagues. We
980 P. Skrbk / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 971–987
said the DDF is a manufacturing company, they said we
are the Armed Forces (senior officer).
The quotation shows that the Office’s criticism was a
challenge to many officers operating with the identity as
‘warriors’. Many soldiers, and especially officers, were
sceptical because they feared that their access to instigate
military commands would be ‘restricted by accountants’.
The officers did not seem to surrender. Owing to this pres-
sure, a General said publicly ‘‘If they will not loyally imple-
ment the system, then we will have to use the command
structure”. In the end, the use of the command structure
would imply the risk of being court-martialled and a fur-
ther risk of imprisonment as a sort of physical violence.
This announcement was later criticised by a DDF informant
who told a journalist from Jyllands-Posten – a conservative
national newspaper - to quote him as saying ‘‘DeMars is an
ordered success” (Jyllands-Posten, 24/10 2002a).3 A whole
stream of overflows was generated causing trouble for the
proponents and others.
New sets of overflowing were generated. An episode
developed due to the previous experience with unmanage-
able IT-systems in other government agencies. The De-
Mars-group mobilised a risk management system as a
way of anticipating and handling the problems that might
arise. The risk management system might be seen to antic-
ipate and handle the externalities generated by DeMars. By
means of the system, they produced a number of risk anal-
ysis reports. Paradoxically ‘‘Suddenly one large report ex-
ploded in our hands because someone within the DDF
leaked a report to the press” (senior officer). Unexpectedly,
the risk management system produced reports describing
so many problems that it caused someone to leak the re-
ports to the press and the Office. In Jyllands-Posten, a jour-
nalist was able to provide new headlines ‘‘DDF: New
problems for the DDF’s IT-system.” (Jyllands-Posten, 24/
10, 2002a). The article reported ‘‘the highly ambitious IT-
system DeMars is in trouble. This is what the DDF now
acknowledges for the first time in a note that ‘has been
leaked from the house’.” (Jyllands-Posten, 24/10, 2002a).
The report was pointing to huge financial problems with
budget overruns and excessive costs used at DeMars, and
according to the newspaper but taken from other budgets
(building maintenance) within the DDF.
In order to ease the enrolment of officers, their account-
ing expertise became part of the career planning and
advancement system in the military hierarchy. Participa-
tion in accounting training and education now became re-
corded in the HR-module of the SAP-system. Officers were
sent to universities, Business Schools and Academies to be
trained in accounting. The negotiations here taking place
implied that the DDF should bear all the costs of attending
such training and education. The rationale could be that if
the officers better understood accounting, perhaps they
could be seduced into accepting the new identity. But even
such activities were not enough. The head of the account-
ing department chose to dismiss a handful of officers who
3
Other newspapers than Jyllands-Posten wrote frequently about the
problems of DeMars. Here I refer primarily to this newspaper because it
wrote with the highest intensity and with the higher levels of detail.
were late in their careers. They were said not to possess
‘proper’ accounting expertise. Such an event shocked many
officers now being more motivated to attend training in
accounting.
To sum up, the description shows how the identities of
the officers within the DDF have been caught up in the pro-
cesses caused by the DeMars-project. The introduction of
the DeMars system destabilized the occupational identity
of the officers as persons training and leading soldiers into
combat. The ‘commodification issue’ generated a pressure
to define their identity as a ‘manager’. Many frustrations
and conflicts escalated and caused several officers to be-
come sceptical and yet again for some to engage in inform-
ing the press of all the various troubles with the project.
For the individual soldiers, it was a difficult process. It
was difficult to know whether it was desirable to help han-
dling the overflowing or whether it was wise to participate
in the production of them. In terms of the groups of offi-
cers, we have seen how the proponents of DeMars devel-
oped skills to handle the overflowing and to ease
enrolment. Beyond this, they also developed skills to han-
dle the Office, the Finance Committee and others, con-
structing them and turning them into partners. For them,
the overflowing was unexpected and their identities were
at stake. Would they be pinpointed as persons who did
something good, or would they be identified as persons
who did the opposite? At least, they created long careers.
Their early retirement was delayed and they were turned
into well-paid consultants. In this case, the audit had im-
mense implications for the people employed at this work-
place. But how was it at all made feasible that the few
proponents and some auditors of the Office could come
to speak on behalf of the officers, politicians and civil ser-
vants? This issue is addressed in the section below.
Mobilisation
To answer the question of who speaks in the name of
whom and how actual mobilisation is achieved we have
to illuminate the work involved with getting the green
light of the parliament to initiate the project and how the
masses of officers became displaced in a series of auditor
reports being put in circulation performing the work of
purification.
It has already been described how the Office and the
MoF problematized the accounting systems of the DDF.
Being equipped with the Office audit reports and the MoF
criticism, the DeMap-group was able to work on a larger
report, the FORSTYR report in which the need for a new
ERP-system was outlined. However, the instigators were
closely manoeuvring together with the Office. In one of
its reports the Office recognized that the DDF had initiated
DeMars stating that ‘‘the Office will continuously follow
the development of the DDF’s accounting systems project
by having a project steering group monitoring the develop-
ment” (Rigsrevisionen, 1996, p. 37). This committed the
audit office to involvement in, and the ultimate success
of the DeMars-project.
From the very beginning the Office participated in that
work. Later the MoF joined the group. The report (FORS-
 P. Skrbk / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 971–987 981

TYR report) was published in June 1995 and accepted Finance Committees about the ‘unmanageable’ IT-system
by the MoD, the Office and the MoF accepted his report. developments (the Amanda and VUE scandals, as men-
Certain people made sure that there was wide support tioned in Section 4).
behind this significant and far reaching change before But the manoeuvring and the proper identity of the Of-
it was started (officer). fice became a heated issue. In the PAC, certain concerns
emerged about whether the Office was involved with the
The instigating officers were trying to enrol the Office
DeMars project as a consultant giving advices rather than
and the MoF representatives into the network and to fix
just recommendations. From a document of the Office (Rigs-
their identity as ‘modernizers’. In February 1998 with
revisionen, 1999, p. 1) to the PAC, the Auditor-General
the FORSTYR report being praised by the MoF and the
promised to make a statement of its engagement with the
Office, it was subsequently circulated to the parliament’s
DeMars-project. Even though this statement for some un-
Finance Committee together with a proposal document
known reason was never made, it did not hinder the Office
to formally decide to invest in a new ERP-system. On
from performing the work of purification in two later
this basis the Committee approved Statute 140, which
episodes.
provided legal access for the DeMars-group to invest
around £75 million in an ERP-system. From this time
The Office’s attempts of technical purification 1999–2002
onwards the Office became considerably more friendly
In the year after the approval of Statute 140, the Finance
towards the DDF in its reports. This is seen in the Office
Committee was recurrently concerned with the implemen-
annual report (Rigsrevisionen, 1998) of 1996, in which it
tation of DeMars. An issue of whether the DDF has spent
praised the DDF for being ready to develop the DeMars-
more money than granted by the parliament emerged
project.
and was referred to in the (tabloid) newspaper (Ekstra Bla-
After the approval the project group began to prepare
det 13/2, 2002). Anonymous officers in the DDF later went
tender documents. In the pre-qualification round, three
public with the accusation that money was transferred
companies of five were chosen. After this episode and a
from the DDF’s ordinary budget to the DeMars-project. In
somewhat problematic tendering with a lot of hidden de-
newspaper articles, a journalist quoted an associate profes-
bates among the ERP-suppliers and very sceptical consul-
sor in computer science, by now identified as one of the
tancy companies, the SAP Ltd. was chosen to deliver the
leading computer experts in Denmark, as saying ‘‘The cre-
SAP R/3-system to replace more than 60 IT-systems within
ative camouflage technique to finance investments from
the DDF. Subsequently, a large number of consultants
ordinary appropriations is something we have seen in the
started to work, many committees were set up, new func-
IT-scandals, Amanda and VUE” (Jyllands-Posten, 10/11,
tions were created and many soldiers and officers became
2002b). Later, in the very same article, the chairman of
involved or entirely dedicated in various ways. In moments
the PAC was quoted as saying ‘‘In the end, it should be
of mobilisation, thousands of people were either involved
interesting to see how much money has been spent within
or affected by DeMars.
or outside the appropriation”. He did not point to any lar-
But the issue of the Office’s role became the object of
ger and more serious troubles.
discussion
In contrast, an external consultant pointed to serious
The MoF, the Office and others had a hidden agenda. troubles with implementing the costing principle in the
They decided that the only place such a huge project DeMars system. He was concerned about the develop-
could be implemented was the DDF. Therefore, the ment and found that the controlling unit of SAP R/3 with
Office was sitting at the end of the table when DeMars all the cost calculations and transfer prices was turning
was decided (officers). into a ‘mess’. He wrote to the instigators, whom he char-
acterized as the ‘grey eminencies’, since he was not al-
This illustrates how the Office was manoeuvring with
lowed to talk to them directly. He assessed that DKK
the identity as ‘modernizer’ in the period around the deci-
500 million (£45 million) had been lost. He pointed out
sion to implement DeMars. But also it could manoeuvre
that so many efforts had been directed towards develop-
with the identity as an ‘independent auditor’. Several
ing the costing principle that they had forgotten to handle
MPs from various parties also expressed their concern in
the appropriations in the financial unit of SAP. At the
the press under the headline ‘‘MPs fear a new IT-scandal”
time, the DDF appropriations were out of control. There
(Jyllands-Posten, 18/2 1998). To reduce such worries, the
was a deficit of approx. DKK 150–200 million on the
Office chose to comment on the DeMars-project in their
DDF’s ordinary appropriations (approximately £18 mil-
1996 annual report (Rigsrevisionen, 1998) to the parlia-
lion), (Rigsrevisionen, 2003, p. 5). Having identified the
ment where the Auditor-General assured that the DeMars
problem, the PAC ordered the Office to explain the miss-
‘‘will solve all significant problems. . .” (Rigsrevisionen,
ing millions. The Office’s response – now manoeuvring
1998, p. 19).
with the identity as an independent auditor – in report
By providing such a positive appraisal of the whole pro-
(A303/03) was as follows:
ject, the Office used its annual report to purify the DeMars-
project. As media in broad circulation, the annual report of Our examination has shown that the problems of con-
the Office is as ‘the’ final report to the parliament granted a trol are not related to DeMars, because in the examina-
high justification. The fact that the Office committed itself tion no weaknesses of the system have been identified
so directly to the DeMars project should also be seen in the in relation to budgeting and evaluation. (Rigsrevisionen,
context of the large scepticism among several MPs of the 2003, p. 42).
982 P. Skrbk / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 971–987
In this report, the Office purified DeMars in a technical
sense by arguing that the problems were not related to
DeMars. However, the Office’s claim was not challenged
by anybody willing to go to the press or other bodies.
The consultant had no incentive to go to the press be-
cause as he said in the interview ‘‘then I would be fin-
ished as a consultant”. This points to the case that in
practice the audit report was not open for public scrutiny.
Also, the officers with insights would face serious risks of
missing promotion if they intervened in the public de-
bate. In this way, the Office helped to maintain the
spokesmen role of the instigating officers and to stabilise
the construction.
That the Office succeeded manoeuvring with the iden-
tity as ‘independent auditor’ relates to the way it con-
structed its report. It did not just uncritically accept
everything about the DeMars-project. It did point to some
problems with the management control part. However, the
Office stated that the problems were due to the lack of va-
lid numbers from several authorities within the DDF and in
this way it indirectly criticised the officers manning the
computers and being responsible for recordings. But to
outsiders such problems can be solved with better training
and discipline. In this way, the Office tried to create trust-
worthiness to their report by including some ‘free secrets’
(Goffman, 1959) about some problems that in the present
situation were without any significant implications. Purify-
ing as an independent auditor that in other (but related)
moments operates with other identities such as ‘modern-
izer’ implies that something must be criticised to perform
with a ‘balanced view’. Even though some persons ex-
pressed doubts about the reports during these events the
Office succeeded in purifying DeMars in a technical sense
and to sort out the emergent overflowing by silencing
the sceptical politicians and officers. But that effect did
not last for long.
Second attempts of purification and closure 2005–2006
In the summer 2005, the episodes from 2002 returned
with a new intensity, which perhaps produced more
heated overflowing than ever before in the ‘life’ of DeMars.
Officers found that the system was scandalous and a waste
of time. Therefore, some leaked stories to the press creat-
ing further overflowing. Jyllands-Posten had received
‘unpublished’ statements on DeMars from the Office leaked
by an unknown person. In the documents, the Office ex-
pressed some concern about DeMars ‘‘. . ..there has been a
lack of process understanding and data discipline, and
there has been a lack of instructions and guidance” (Jyl-
lands-Posten, 5/6 2005a) concluding that this is ‘less satis-
factory’. However, this is not severe criticism by the Office.
In the article, the journalist commented on the notes
While the tone of the Office is critical towards the DDF’s
use of the system, which is called DEtrash by the users,
the Office accept uncritically the accounts of the
DeMars-project made by the DDF (Jyllands-Posten 5/6,
2005a).
The journalist also contacted a highly influential MP,
Peter Skaarup (member of the government’s supporting
party), who was critical of the Office
You get the feeling that the Office has approved the
budgetary aspects with a rubber stamp to avoid admit-
ting that its control through the years has been insuffi-
cient. . . The Office has done nothing to verify the
information.. if we were talking about real auditing,
they would not just refer to what has been stated (Jyl-
lands-Posten 5/6, 2005a).
Instead of directing questions towards the Office or the
PAC, Peter Skaarup decided that he would direct his ques-
tions about DeMars to the Minister of Defence. The Audi-
tor-General replied to the journalist by saying that the
note was only a working paper, which he himself had not
seen. The day after the article had been published in Jyl-
lands-Posten, the journalist contacted another MP
Now, the DeMars system has to be investigated in
greater depth. Holger K. Nielsen, SF’s (Ed. left wing
party) spokesperson on DDF matters will take the initia-
tive. I will send a letter to the chairman of the PAC,
Peder Larsen, (also representing SF). I will ask him and
the committee to ensure that an audit report is made
to uncover the real budgetary overruns of DeMars
(Jyllands-Posten, 6. June, 2005b).
As a result of this request, the Office announced that
they would publish a new report in November, 2005 (Rigs-
revisionen, 2005). In this report, the Office provided the re-
sults of their review. Even though Holger K. Nielsen, MP,
asked for a review of the costs of DeMars the Office also re-
viewed some technological aspects of DeMars. In the 30
page report, 5 pages are about the financial aspects of De-
Mars and about 20 pages are on the use of DeMars. In the
first five pages, an introduction is given to the report. From
page seven it appears that the Office now manoeuvred
with the identity as an ‘independent auditor’ by saying
The military headquarters is responsible for the devel-
opment and the use of DeMars. The investigation is
therefore delimited to encompass the MoD, the DDF
Command Denmark and affiliated authorities (Ed. army,
navy, air force, etc. (Rigsrevisionen, 2005, p. 7).
On the heated debate in the parliament about the costs
of DeMars, the Office concludes at page 18
That the account of the project is correct. The assess-
ment is in addition drawn on the case that the DDF
has acquired and used DeMars and increased its finan-
cial consumption by DKK 35 million, which gives a
3.1% budget overrun compared to the adjusted budget
of 2001 (Rigsrevisionen, 2005, p. 18).
In this practice of purification, establishing categories
such as ‘correct’ or ‘not correct’, the Office ended up puri-
fying the DDF’s financial statement on DeMars. But also
generally on the technological aspects the Office praised
the system. It did so while manoeuvring as an ‘indepen-
dent auditor’, but simultaneously also manoeuvring as
‘modernizer’ by pointing to further challenges for the
DDF on what is so important to the Office, namely the issue
of cost allocations
It is the assessment of the Office that DeMars has now
been implemented satisfactorily . . .. Though there is
 P. Skrbk / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 971–987
still a job to work with the cost apportionments. A cer-
tain part of the costs can only be allocated through
some cost driver rates (Rigsrevisionen, 2005, p. 28).
However, the debate and the new report did not touch
upon the accusation of the Office being a ‘dependent audi-
tor’. But how could it happen that the auditor did not com-
ment on an issue that the MPs had raised? In an interview,
the chairman of the PAC said ‘‘we cannot accept that the
Office involves itself in active consulting”. However, we
must also pay attention to another quotation by the chair-
man of the PAC
It is not our task to criticise decisions of the parliament.
When the parliament has made a decision, the officials
have to implement it. We will not assess whether the
requirements of the parliament are fair or not. If they
say that the law of gravitation does not exist, then we
do not say that it does. Perhaps we are skeptical as pri-
vate persons, but we have to respect the parliamentary
decisions (Chairman of the PAC).
Within the PAC, efforts are made to avoid situations in
which authority and belief in the democratic institutions
are questioned. The PAC, the Office and the parliament
gather to avert any overflowing that may threaten DeMars,
the Office and the parliament. All their identities are at
stake. Many issues concerning DeMars were being dis-
cussed in the DDF, the parliament and the press.
The last audit report about DeMars as mentioned above
was expected to have the effect that any debate about De-
Mars should now stop. However, additional efforts were
necessary to avoid that the report and its conclusions
would be questioned. In the parliament, critical MPs were
convinced that any further debate would be useless. Sur-
prisingly, instead of criticising the Office a journalist could
now write
The much criticised IT-system within the DDF is in
essence a sound business. This is concluded in a new
report from the Office on the largest IT-system in the
history of Denmark (Jyllands-Posten 2/12, 2005c).
To enable such writings in this situation, comprehen-
sive actions are the necessary investments to maintain
the purifying effect of the auditor reports to influence pub-
lic opinion. Many actions were necessary to secure the un-
easy role of the Office, and it illustrates how the success of
DeMars and the identities involved are the result of contin-
uous investments.
The independence controversy appeared due to the
unexpected overflowing. Even the dependency controversy
became an overflow to be cooled. In this situation, the Of-
fice became dependent on both the government (the DDF)
and the parliament in a wider sense. The Office was partic-
ipating in handling framing and overflowing issues of
DeMars. In this case, the dependency issue was raised in
the press, and even prominent MPs were turning their
attention to the issue. But at the moments of decision,
other MPs turned their attention to the financial issues of
DeMars ‘‘What was the cost of implementing DeMars?”
( Jyllands-Posten 6/6, 2005b). Even the chairman of the
PAC, who had expressed his concern with ‘‘the Office being
983
a consultant”, was eager to talk about the financial issues
hence realizing new interests. In such political matters,
the PAC transformed itself to an entity that avoided debat-
ing the issue of dependency.
Due to the overflowing, the Office appeared to be in a
situation where it had become a significant partner in cre-
ating DeMars, and in subsequent episodes the Office real-
ized that it would now be difficult to criticise DeMars.
Therefore, the many audit notes and reports of the Office
may be identified as instances of auto-audits or self-re-
view. With the help of audit reports, they were able to pur-
ify the constructions in which they participated. In this
situation, the auditors manoeuvred with different identi-
ties and their manoeuvres were possible because the PAC
and the parliament allowed for this possibility. Some
groups criticised the auditors for acting as being a partner
of DeMars, but these efforts were without much success. In
this way, temporal closure has been achieved. But without
the Office manoeuvring with different identities it was
very likely that DeMars would have collapsed and ended
up in a public scandal. But as Callon (1986) points out con-
sensus can be contested at any moment.
Discussion and conclusions
Much has been written about auditing and audit work.
However, few studies have set out to follow the auditors in
action and in practical settings. This paper set out to study
auditors in action and addressed the question of how do
they manoeuvre in various stages of the work to make an
accountability project at all feasible. I relate the description
of this task to three interrelated themes in the audit
literature.
Making ‘‘new” things auditable
The literature on auditing and especially that on making
‘‘new” things auditable (Power, 2003a), such as the effi-
ciency of the public sector, has grown modestly within
the last decade or so to study how such activity is made
possible. In the study by Gendron et al. (2007) it is shown
how the public sector auditors developed a strategy to be-
come recognized as central in performance measurement.
From the present study it appeared that the Danish Office
developed a similar interest, by participating in the initia-
tion of a project to make the DDF’s ‘efficiency’ auditable. It
did so by configuring its audit reports to facilitate purposes
of problematization. In a number of audit reports they crit-
icised the DDF’s accounting systems and pointed to the
lack of capability to calculate unit costs as a measure of
efficiency. But problematization was not limited to the
auditors. A couple of instigating officers within the DDF
created a network in which the Office became an impor-
tant actor and ally. As these two actors worked in concert
to initiate the innovation, they made strong references to
the knowledge base of ‘efficiency’ in terms of the MoF
and its SØS-publications as a means of claiming legitimacy.
But to get the green light to initiate the innovation, the
instigators, and in this case, the Office had to mobilise
the law of the Office (S.18) which makes it compulsory
984 P. Skrbk / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 971–987
for the auditee to identify necessary measures (reforms).
This exhibits the important finding that at least in a Danish
context it is within such a refined socio-technical audit
framework that the auditee is constructed as an entity,
who needs to be innovative and made receptive to the
audit knowledge base. This adds nuances to Power’s
(1996) description of how it is that consultants are the
new policy makers of the public sector. The present case
illustrates that it is rather the Office and MoF that together
act as policy makers and the ones that make the auditee
receptive.
In addition to the auditors’ efforts in defining the audi-
tee in a role to change, the auditee also succeeded in con-
structing the Office as an enrollee into the emergent
construction of innovation. They did so by establishing var-
ious committees and presenting plans and intentions to
the Office and other bodies before deciding to take action.
In further actions relating to all the four moments of mak-
ing an innovation successful, the Office became enrolled to
help the DDF and the government to turn the innovation
(DeMars) into a success. In this way, the problematization
activity was extended to further involve the Office in the
execution of the innovation. This also generated problems
in terms of a lack of independence to which I return below.
Meanwhile, I turn attention to the insights into the disor-
der, in terms of overflowing, created by the innovation.
Instead of theorising disorder as ‘unintended conse-
quences’ or ‘side-effects’, the present case illustrates how
a whole range of overflows emerged and how they influ-
enced the constructions while DeMars was being devel-
oped and framed in particular ways. In terms of framing,
a significant project to develop a large IT-system has been
initiated. From the very beginning, many officers were
sceptical of the whole project. As the project commenced,
almost all officers in the DDF had been enrolled to perform
the role as a ‘manager’ in recording their activities and re-
sults, thus making budgets and accounts operate function-
ally. The system defined officers in a role where they
should participate in meetings with auditors from the Of-
fice and auditors and controllers of the DDF. In such
encounters officers were expected to discuss the issues of
recording, performance and measurement. The technolo-
gies defined the officers to perform towards accountants,
auditors and superior managers as audiences. For officers
to perform with success in such situations requires
accounting skills in order to be in touch with the account-
ing and audit framework organizing these encounters.
In these encounters, much overflowing was generated.
Among such overflowing was early scepticism of officers
with respect to at least six issues. Their concerns were first,
the difficulty of defining relevant cost objects; second, the
use of too much money on such a project; third, the prob-
lems of the consultants and other systems designers to
make things work; fourth, problems that suddenly seemed
to be overwhelming by the actors who felt these problems
were impossible to solve; fifth, recognition by officers that,
in manoeuvring with the hybrid identity doing administra-
tive work, they would lead attention away from their war-
rior identity exercising leadership in training soldiers and
engaging in combat; and finally, that the risk management
system itself paradoxically generated overflows. All such
overflows recurrently created heated debates inside and
outside the DDF and some officers engaged themselves in
bringing forth the descriptions of such problems to the
press thus adding dynamics to the project. New actions
were taken to try to handle such overflowing in terms of
refining the constructions. This comprised action to im-
prove the manuals, the training, the categories in the soft-
ware, etc. in potentially endless sets of actions. Some such
instances can be labelled ‘unintended consequences’ but
not the resistance of officers. As much as we can talk about
‘intentions’, officers must be seen to be intentionally trying
to resist the construction by leaking information to the
press and trying to put pressure on the spokespersons.
Such actions were quite unexpected by the instigators
and other proponents. The identity troubles of the officers
(see also Skrbk & Thorbjørnsen, 2007) can also with
meaning be talked about as a ‘‘side-effect”. But the defini-
tion of the proper identity as hybrid ‘warrior and manager’
must be seen to be a direct consequence of the very con-
struction in terms of problematization and the technolo-
gies under construction.
Therefore, to make things auditable including by ‘norm’
as Callon (1998b) would say, involves the generation of
overflowing and certain activities generated to contain
those overflows within the framing. As overflows are gen-
erated, substantial efforts and frequently substantial
investments are made to secure stabilisation and hinder
the collapse of the construction. The notion of overflowing
informs us that constructions such as accounting innova-
tions can and will at any time generate overflows as the
construction performs to wider sets of audiences being en-
rolled in certain roles, or more broadly, the public. If over-
flows are not handled, they come to threaten the
construction. As I will develop in the next section, experts
such as auditors can be of particular help to handle over-
flowing in order to screen out obstacles for the enrolled ac-
tors who are manoeuvring with different identities and
interests.
Auditor reports as devices of purification
In his important study, Pentland (1993) points out that
the processes of financial audit can transform financial
statements of corporate management into trustworthy
publications that produce comfort for the public. In this
way, he drew attention to how audit can create financial
order by purifying the statements made by corporate man-
agement. Later, Power (1996) called attention to the wider
processes of making this possible. He characterizes the
processes to establish a knowledge base and make the
environment receptive to it as fact building which involves
several experts including auditors. For instance, he points
out that the socializing processes of auditors can be seen
as a form of ‘‘institutionalised purification”. To comple-
ment these contributions, the present study shows how
performance auditors of the Office became involved in
activity not to merely purify the DDF’s annual financial
statement but also to purify the technical functioning of
the developed accounting systems and the ad hoc state-
ments made by DDF management on whether the ap-
proved budget for the innovation had been met. On
 P. Skrbk / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 971–987
several occasions, the Office was ordered by the PAC to
conduct audit reviews of the DeMars, it has itself been a
part of. But how can we understand the work of purifica-
tion to participate in making the accounting innovation
feasible? The reports were launched in moments where
sceptical officers were going public with the criticisms of
the ways in which the systems worked and did not work.
Some officers informed critical journalists so as to then
heat the situation by involving MPs of the Finance Com-
mittee operating with the identity as ‘investors’. In such
situations, under attack as being ‘bad investors’ they called
upon the PAC to order the Office to perform audits and to
provide independent and objective information on what
is ‘‘right or wrong” in a codifying practice of purification.
As the case shows, the reports by the Office succeeded in
various episodes in silencing the MPs by providing the con-
clusions that the information circulating in the press was
wrong, and that DeMars was technically and financially
sound.
We usually expect purification to be an activity that
erases the mess of relations, but in this instance it just
did not happen. Some MPs and a associate professor in
computer science criticised the Office for not being inde-
pendent, but this debate ceased. Several allies to the Office
gathered together and worked to protect the Office. This
instance is quite a contrast with regard to other jurisdic-
tions – notably in Australia (Funnell, 1998, 2003) there
the performance auditors became heavily criticised as they
took steps to collect government working documents as
part of the audit. This contrast demonstrates that both per-
formance auditing and the ways the auditors can manoeu-
vre are very much dependent on a variety of related actors
and their relations in the actor-network.
We are thus brought to the issues of the Office’s power
and influence. Power (1996) points out that audit is power-
ful but not monolithic. The present case illustrates that
power lies in networks, hence that power is relational just
as are the identities of the participating actors. To say this
also means that audit can be more or less powerful but
never achieve perfection since it is a process of negotiation
with network partners.
Of importance in this process, even though the Office’s
audit reports produced comfort (to the instigating actors,
the parliament and the management of DDF and the broad
public), we should not forget the sceptical officers who
were in this process ignored and not listened to. They were
excluded from the negotiations and did not feel comfort-
able. Pentland (1993) and Power (2003) are right when
noting that audit produces comfort and legitimacy but, like
Justesen and Skrbk (2005), the outcome of audits may
also produce discomfort among the employees of the audi-
tee. The troubles, here theorised as overflowing, that the
officers felt when operating with the hybrid identity of
‘warrior and manager’ were ignored and imply that the
officers are going to live with such discomfort for several
years to come. In moments of being in military combat,
such troubles may increase dramatically but in more
peaceful times and locations such troubles may be less sig-
nificant to them. However, the purifying effect may also be
that officers came to realize that working against the inno-
vation was a waste of time and instead they resolved to
985
live with it. But even though audit produces comfort, it is
always less than perfection. If we listen to Callon
(1998b), discomfort in terms of overflowing must be con-
sidered to be the norm rather than the exception. I agree
with Power (2003b) that more attention should be drawn
to the impact of audit on the auditee. But it could be added
that attention to discomfort in terms of overflowing and
emerging concerned groups (Callon, 2003; Skrbk &
Tryggestad, in press) could prove as interesting in terms
of what audit produces. In conclusion, this case study pro-
vides evidence that audit can not only purify financial
statements, but also purify broader organizational arrange-
ments as also Strathern (2006) suggests. But such actions
also have implications in terms of the identity of the audi-
tors as discussed below.
The identities of auditors
In an early article, Power (1996) briefly refers to how
the processes of auditing have consequences for the ‘‘pro-
fessional” identity of the auditor. This observation was
developed recently by Robson et al. (2007) on how audi-
tors’ engagement with new business areas had implica-
tions for their professional identity. The present study
extends these insights by illuminating the dynamic pro-
cesses of how auditor identity is negotiated and delimited
when being put into action. From the case it appeared that
the Office at the very early moments of the innovation, set
out to problematize the DDF’s accounting systems in terms
of their inability to calculate unit costs as a measure of effi-
ciency. In doing so they made references to a knowledge
base, which had obvious links to the government’s
modernization programme. Also in the Office’s public com-
munication it appeared explicitly that it ‘‘contributes” to
an efficient administration. With congruity in the proble-
matization of the DDF’s activities and the Office’s public
communication on their webpage, the identity of ‘modern-
izer’ and the aspirations to modernize the administration,
emerged. Whereas in the private sector auditors are fre-
quently being criticised for consulting sold on the back of
audit engagements, in the present case this is not exactly
the same issue. The issue here is more complex. The Office
could not carry on without some instigators inside the
DDF. Their simultaneous identity as ‘independent auditor’
delimits them from making the legal act to get the green
light from the parliament to initiate the accountability pro-
ject. However, by establishing close links, for instance, in
participating formally in steering group meetings and
other meetings, the Office became part of the network. In
this, the Office did not just perform work of problematiza-
tion but it also participated with their audit reports being
constructed to circulate ‘independent’ assessments and
criticisms which smoothly developed into the provision
of advice. When overflows were emerging in terms of tech-
nical problems and resistance of officers, the Office partic-
ipated in processes attempting to solve the problems and
to suggest further designs of the devices of interessement
and to ease enrolment of the officers.
From the very start, the Office’s manoeuvres as
‘modernizer’ created debates. As the Finance Committee
considered its approval of the statute, the PAC asked the
986 P. Skrbk / Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 (2009) 971–987
Auditor-General to make a statement of how it had partic-
ipated in preparing the statute. Even though such a state-
ment has not been published it demonstrates the
conflicts between being simultaneously a ‘modernizer’
and an ‘independent auditor’. These conflicts escalated in
later processes when the Office was called in to evaluate
the whole project. In this way, the present study is a con-
firmation of Gendron et al.’s (2001) argument that auditors
cannot claim to behave with independence when they are
involved in something which comes close to proactive con-
sultancy activity. But in contrast to their study this case
shows that even though it became an issue in overall
terms, the negotiations did not lead to the Office being for-
mally or publicly criticised by the PAC or other parliamen-
tary units. They succeeded in operating with the two
identities even though it was not without problems. The
conflicting identities became an overflow in itself, which
created the need for unexpected actions, for instance, to
end further debate. As already mentioned, this study
shows that influential entities define their interests to be
aligned with NAOD as modernizer.
Indeed there is a need to remind society of how to elim-
inate the expectation gap as pointed out by Gendron et al.
(2001) and Everett, Green, and Neu (2005). But part of the
explanation as to how performance auditing seems to be
stabilised, and not to address the gap, is that the Office
helps the parliament to demonstrate a vitality of democ-
racy by modernizing it and maintaining a formal rational-
ity as is also stressed by Radcliffe (1999). The fact that the
Office was able to handle the overflows generated by
the DeMars-project, contributes to establishing order in
the DDF, in State and thereby parliament. As it appears it
seems like the Danish Office has succeeded in convincing
the spokespersons who speak on behalf of society, of its
expertise. This finding confirms the findings of Gendron
et al. (2007) in a Canadian context.
According to Power (2003b, p. 199) ‘‘It should be recog-
nized that a certain degree of auditor dependence on the
auditee is desirable and necessary”, but it is difficult to
anticipate where the limit to ‘a certain degree’ may be, as
is also pointed out by Bowerman, Humphrey, and Owen
(2003). In this case, the Office and the MoF were commit-
ted to make the DDF produce a ‘business case’ for a radical
implementation of the performance-accountability project.
In such a situation, the Office might be tempted to enter a
closer relationship with the auditee than in other less
ambitious situations. The auditor’s manoeuvrability
appears to be conditioned by the situations and the unex-
pected events that they face. Sometimes, the independence
claim is a resource to the auditors, and in other situations,
it is a constraint. However, at least in the Danish DDF con-
text there seem to be strong forces that help to handle the
dependency overflow when it arises in the processes of
auditors participating in making things auditable.
In future research, how the identities of various groups
of people within the auditee are reconfigured in audit pro-
cesses should attract more attention. This research saw it
in relation to the processes of an accounting innovation,
but how the auditee develops strategies to avoid being
blamed in audits could also prove interesting. Even though
Power (2003b) emphasises that much has been written on
auditors and auditing and therefore argues that we need to
know more about the auditee, still little is known about
how the organizational identities of audit offices are recon-
figured in action, especially as they carry out performance
audits. To follow their manoeuvres in the many different
networks that they become part of can provide additional
insights into how auditors’ and their network partners’
identity aspirations are threatened in various episodes,
and how they work to overcome such situations. In rela-
tion to some of the performance auditing reports here
theorised as devices of purification, I agree with Chua
(2007, p. 409) that it proves interesting to study ‘how
inscriptions are made up and given meaning’. I would
add that performance auditors are also involved with mak-
ing up inscriptions that in various episodes are put into cir-
culation among a variety of audiences to reconfigure their
identities.
Acknowledgements
My particular thanks to Yves Gendron, Mark Christen-
sen, Kjell Tryggestad, Jan Mouritsen, Andrea Mennicken,
Anette Mikes, Thomas Riise Johansen, Poul Erik Christian-
sen, Eija Vinnari and the two anonymous reviewers for the
advice and helpful comments. Also, I gratefully acknowl-
edge valuable comments received from participants at the
CPA conference in Cardiff, 2006, and the workshop on
‘‘Management Accounting as Social and Organizational
Practice”, HEC, Paris, 2008. Special thanks to Mark Christen-
sen for making the English run more smoothly.
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