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The study here helps to fill the gap between the current practices of management performance audits for firms and government agencies. The study advances recent theories of program evaluation and marketing management auditing. While the application in this chapter refers to government agencies managing destination marketing programs (tourism agencies), the algorithmic model construction is applicable for all management audits. The study applies the perspectives from two streams of theory to describe five relevant activities for managing destination marketing programs: scanning, planning, implementation, assessing, and administering. The analysis proposes impact assessments to improve management performances of DMOs via checklists for assessing the quality of information in tourism-management performance audits. Checklists can serve as a management tool by management performance auditors and by DMO executives to enhance the quality in executing destination marketing programs. A meta-evaluation of 10 tourism management audit reports identifies good and bad practices. The findings indicate that substantial improvements are possible in the practice of DMO’s management performance auditing, and the proposed checklist may ensure both high quality performance audit reports and improved performances in DMO practices.

The present chapter includes a case study that describes and analyzes three performance audit reports over a three decade period for one U.S. state government's destination management organization's (DMO) actions and outcomes. This report extends prior studies (Woodside & Sakai, 2001, 2003) that support two conclusions: (1) the available independent performance audits of DMOs’ actions and outcomes indicate that frequently DMOs perform poorly and fail to meaningfully assess the impacts of their own actions and (2) the audits themselves are shallow and often fail to provide information on DMOs’ actions and outcomes relating to these organizations largest marketing expenditures. The chapter calls for embracing a strategy shift in designing program evaluations by both government departments responsible for managing destinations’ tourism marketing programs and all government auditing agencies in conducting future management performance audits. The chapter offers a “tourism performance audit template” as a tool for both strategic planning by destination management organizations and for evaluating DMOs’ planning and implementing strategies. The chapter includes an appendix – a training exercise in using the audit template and invites the reader to download a tourism performance audit report of a destination marketing organization and to apply the template after reading the report.

Australian auditing standard AUP 33 ‐ Performance Auditing is the first auditing standard to deal exclusively with a non‐“financial statements” audit topic. Auditing the performance of management and commenting on how economically, efficiently and effectively they have performed their duties is not a new subject. However, up until now the results of performance audits have usually been kept within the organization concerned. With the growth of perceived dissatisfaction with current auditing in Australia and the demand for more management accountability due to corporate collapses, considers the possibility of performance audits becoming mandatory. Problems to be overcome in establishing a performance audit framework include audit independence, cost/benefit decisions and the establishment of adequate measurement criteria. However, if the demands for performance audits escalate these problems will have to be overcome. Indeed they are not now seen as insurmountable.

In this decade we have witnessed in the Australian public sector tremendous pressures for change in the name of accountability and efficiency. Changes have occurred in public sector management and in public sector accounting. Techniques such as programme budgeting, financial management initiatives, enhanced annual reporting and performance audits have all been promoted. These changes have led to a “new” accounting for the public sector. Performance auditing is compared at the commonwealth and the state level, and a study is provided of how a change in accounting can affect the organisation, in a social and political context. Differences between performance auditing and traditional auditing are illustrated and then assessed within a framework of accountability.

This paper seeks to investigate the work performed by French Cour des comptes magistrates as part of performance audits. The research objective is to understand who the magistrates are, what they do, how they do what they do, how they perceive their role, what authority they feel they can claim, and how, through performance audits, they try to influence the way the organisations they visit are run.

In addition to 35 interviews conducted with Court magistrates (based on a semi-structured interview questionnaire) and non-participant observation, public documentation was analysed. To understand how magistrates perform their tasks at the Court, basic theories on influence processes and theories on decision making developed by Herbert A. Simon were applied.

After exploring the universe in which magistrates of the French Cour des comptes operate, it appears that their undertaking of performance audits has engendered a host of competing visions: the transition to modernity has to occur. The Court presents itself officially as a supreme audit institution but it acts as a grand corps de l ' État (senior branch of the Civil Service). Magistrates come to the Court of their own accord and make every effort to avoid being viewed as control professionals. The Court openly positions itself as a “judge of management”, wishing to impose its jurisdictional authority on activities that are essentially professional in character. A migration from traditional roles is observed: the role of the Court as a critic of the Administration has been sidelined. In addition, the magistrates claim to be judges when they are in the ambit of the Court, but shed this role for that of “catalysts of change” when they interact with representatives of the organisations audited.

The research is based on a detailed analysis of a specific context. This may limit the wider applicability of the findings. However, the data gathered from the French experience could be useful for other supreme audit institutions (SAIs) whose status is equivalent to that of the Court, or whose mandate has expanded in the past decade.

This study lifts the veil on the performance audit practice at one of the numerous supreme audit institutions. In addition, the French context has received scant attention from researchers.

Despite the dominating role which the public sector has played in the transition of the Indian economy, it still suffers from poor managerial efficiency which has an adverse impact on the financial and operational performance. As a result of this, there is a constant demand from public enterprise managers for increased autonomy in order to ensure better efficiency and effectiveness in public enterprises. The system of MOU and Management Audit by articulating the missions, objectives and expected results along with the methods of performance evaluation goes a long way towards improving the performance of public enterprises. Hence by adopting these strategies public sector management in India is shaping up to face turbulent times.

A meta-evaluation is an assessment of evaluation practices. Meta-evaluations include assessments of validity and usefulness of two or more studies that focus on the same issues. Every performance audit is grounded explicitly or implicitly in one or more theories of program evaluation. A deep understanding of alternative theories of program evaluation is helpful to gain clarity about sound auditing practices. We present a review of several theories of program evaluation.

This study includes a meta-evaluation of seven government audits on the efficiency and effectiveness of tourism departments and programs. The seven tourism-marketing performance audits are program evaluations for: Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Minnesota, Australia, and two for Hawaii. The majority of these audits are negative performance assessments. Similarly, although these audits are more useful than none at all, the central conclusion of the meta-evaluation is that most of these audit reports are inadequate assessments. These audits are too limited in the issues examined; not sufficiently grounded in relevant evaluation theory and practice; and fail to include recommendations, that if implemented, would result in substantial increases in performance.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual auditing framework (CAF), which can help the organizations that experience difficulties with current ISO 9001 auditing to achieve their desired benefits with regard to the auditing of conformance, performance, risk management and improvement collectively.

A literature review was undertaken to identify the audit limitations and the program strategies that were reported in literature to overcome these limitations. The relevant audit standard (ISO 9001:2015) and guidelines (ISO 19011:2011 and ISO 19011:2018) have also been reviewed to determine the gap in relation to this purpose.

Most of the previous suggestions to overcome the difficulties of the current ISO 9001 auditing were to focus on processes in addition to ISO 9001 clauses and to apply the two principles of “Process Approach” and “Improvement” of ISO 9001, by having the manner of integration of their risk-based thinking concept and Lean Six Sigma (LSS) approaches, respectively, within audit. However, this integration also has limitations such as the desire for implementing risk management program and the necessity for applying LSS approach. Therefore, a CAF was developed to enhance the ISO 9001 quality audit. It suggests the integration of 12 management tools that are connected to the seven principles of ISO 9001:2015 severally and collectively. The selected tools ought to be linked to the audit limitations that have been previously reported in the literature, and connected with the complaints of the organizations that experience difficulties with current ISO 9001 auditing. Auditing of conformance/performance, risk management and improvement in combination can be assured by upgrading, testing and validating this CAF.

Utilizing the ISO 9001 quality audit in a way that helps organizations to audit performance, risk management and improvement in combination by changing the auditing approach from ISO 9001 elements to ISO 9001 principles and by learning from the experience of business excellence models implementers in development of the Performance measurement frameworks and in converting the concepts and principles into practice.

To determine if the anticipation of an initial audit affects an individual's accuracy in preparing vouchers – an accounting task – in a business environment.

A laboratory setting was chosen to maintain greater control over the variables influencing an individual's performance of a typical accounting activity.

The results of the analyses indicated that anticipation of the audit does influence accuracy of performance of the participants, who made a statistically significant smaller number of errors than their counterparts not anticipating an audit. The research design involved varying the content and source of the communications which subjects received describing the purpose and conduct of the audit. The subjects chosen for the experiment were 90 College of Business and Economics students.

The study uses students to surrogate for internal audit personnel and it is based in the USA, which may limit its usefulness elsewhere.

The results of this study indicate that management should continue or consider using an audit as a component of its overall control system. Further, they should be as forthcoming as possible concerning the scope of the audit since study results indicate that employees are inclined to focus on management‐provided measurement points.

This paper helps fill a void in the literature as to whether audits improve performance.

This study reports the findings of a survey of Swedish auditors seeking opinions on the conceptual underpinnings of the long established private sector management audit in that country. The authors give the background to the historical calls for accountability and stewardship and draw parallels with calls for accountability by the large modern corporations which emanate from the agency contracts that management functions under. The findings conclude that the Swedish profession needs a theoretical base for its continued conduct of this audit function. The UK and US professions have taken tentative steps towards expanding the traditional financial audit but the rallying calls of visionaries seem as yet to be unheeded.