In 2016, the three Auditors General of the Swedish National Audit Office asked to be relieved of their positions after a period of intense criticism in the media. Swedish journalists had revealed that they all three had acted in ways that were not compatible with the office, and even in some cases against anti-corruption rules. However, it was also revealed that the staff resistance to the organisational change brought about by the three auditors had also contributed to the ongoing conflict within the agency. This paper aims to deepen the understanding of the situation within the agency and of how the change management methods used caused a conflict between the staff and the organisational leadership. I look into how the organisational transformation was accomplished and what the consequences were for performance auditors as a profession. The material consists primarily of interviews with employees of the performance audit department of the Swedish National Audit Office, and has been supplemented with independent audits of the organisational change within the agency and with media coverage. The material is analysed from the perspective of theories of change management as well as professionalism and new managerialism. The analysis of the gathered materials demonstrates that the change management and the resulting new working situation for the performance auditors was brought about through a leadership that ran roughshod over the professional needs and complaints of the performance auditors. It is highly likely that this is the critical reason for the crisis that occurred within the institution and later led to the resignation of the Auditors General. It seems, in fact, that the employees of the agency turned to media with compromising information because they wished to remove the leadership for other reasons. The outside pressure and lack of support from within the organisation made it then impossible for the auditors to continue in their positions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-363125 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | de Haas, Sara |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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