•Digitalization improves the quality of audit and its role as a governance mechanism.•With Big data, audit firms move from a sampling method to a global analysis.•Auditors will focus on data analysis ...rather than on data collection.•Our findings confirmed for Auditor's the acquisition of new digital competencies.•The results highlight the need to revise the auditing standards.
The literature demonstrates the growing interest of digitalization in organizations. The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of digitalization on audit’s business and to understand how it can improve the role of audit as a governance mechanism. A qualitative approach was conducted by interviewing auditors from the five largest auditing firms in France. This paper demonstrates that digital technology is impacting at five key levels audit firms especially the audit role as a governance mechanism. Digitalization will improve the audit relevance (1) allowing audit firms to extend their offers by proposing new services (2). It will also improve the audit quality mainly by analysing all data’s customer (3). Finally, with the digitalization a new auditor profile emerges (4), enabling the culture of innovation within audit firms (5). Thus, the firm governance will be improved but the managers ‘discretionary power will be limited. This research highlights the importance of implementing digital strategies to provide regulators with the necessary modifications that need to occur for audit standards. It should enable Business School and universities to adapt their training programs according to the audit firms’ expectations.
Utilizing a statewide survey and administrative data, we explore how state-imposed burdens are translated by street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) into frontline practices that may alleviate or exacerbate ...onerous experiences of the administrative state. First, we find that SLBs’ role perceptions shaped not only uses of discretionary power—as either a force of client empowerment or disentitlement—but also program access. Second, we find that the local agencies with the largest proportions of income-eligible clients often had the least capacity for alleviating administrative burden, suggesting decentralization may be a mechanism by which administrative burden perpetuates structural inequality.
This article considers some of the risks and challenges raised by the use of algorithm-assisted decision-making and predictive tools by the public sector. Alongside, it reviews a number of ...long-standing English administrative law rules designed to regulate the discretionary power of the state. The principles of administrative law are concerned with human decisions involved in the exercise of state power and discretion, thus offering a promising avenue for the regulation of the growing number of algorithm-assisted decisions within the public sector. This article attempts to re-frame key rules for the new algorithmic environment and argues that 'old' law-interpreted for a new context-can help guide lawyers, scientists and public sector practitioners alike when considering the development and deployment of new algorithmic tools.
This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'The growing ubiquity of algorithms in society: implications, impacts and innovations'.
In theory, granting politicians tools to oversee bureaucrats can reduce administrative malfeasance. In contrast, I argue that the political control of bureaucrats can increase corruption when ...politicians need money to fund election campaigns and face limited institutional constraints. In such contexts, politicians can leverage their discretionary powers to incentivize bureaucrats to extract rents from the state on politicians' behalf. Using data from an original survey of bureaucrats (N = 864) across 80 randomly sampled local governments in Ghana, I show that bureaucrats are more likely to facilitate politicians' corrupt behavior when politicians are perceived to be empowered with higher levels of discretionary control. Using qualitative data and a list experiment to demonstrate the mechanism, I show that politicians enact corruption by threatening to transfer noncompliant officers. My findings provide new evidence on the sources of public administrative deficiencies in developing countries and qualify the presumption that greater political oversight improves governance.
Managerial Discretion Wangrow, David B.; Schepker, Donald J.; Barker, Vincent L.
Journal of management,
01/2015, Letnik:
41, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Scholars have long been interested in when and to what degree managers are able to exert control over their organizations. In this review, we examine managerial discretion, or the latitude of action ...available to managers. Since its introduction, scholars have attempted to explain when managers will have discretion, what discretion means for organizational outcomes, and how discretion may differentially influence organizational outcomes when it enables or constrains leaders. Our review indicates that while a significant number of studies have examined discretion, few have attempted to validate the prescriptions of the managerial discretion construct. Furthermore, studies to date have primarily focused on the industry task environment as a measure of discretion, with less attention focused on the manager’s characteristics and the internal organization. We then assess construct validity and the measurement of managerial discretion, offering recommendations to future researchers for improving the operationalization of this construct. Finally, we consider how discretion forces may interact as either complements or substitutes and how such interactions may have both organizational- and individual-level consequences.
This study examined how selective rule enforcement on prison units is related to individual misconduct. Selective rule enforcement was operationalized as the unit-level discrepancy between self- and ...officially reported misconduct. Both survey and administrative data were used from 4,123 individuals incarcerated in 197 units in the Netherlands. Findings showed that the level of selective rule enforcement varied greatly across units, irrespective of regime, with averages above zero. Multilevel regression analyses indicated that, after controlling for important covariates, selective rule enforcement on units was consistently related to the odds of displaying misconduct including verbal, physical, property, and contrabands misconduct. These findings demonstrate the importance of contextual differences and the use of discretion by correctional officers for individual behavior in prison.
This article examines how street-level bureaucrats within migration control use their scope for discretionary powers. On the basis of two ethnographic studies of French consulates in Yaoundé and ...Tunis, we argue that state agents’ practices are significantly shaped by organizational constraints such as how decision-making processes are organized and the bureaucratic habitus, including the fear of fraud. Like other street-level bureaucrats, consular agents are able to draw on legal frameworks in a flexible and instrumental manner. Yet, in the field of migration policy, their scope for discretionary decision making is wider and influenced by their belief that they are acting to defend the national interest. This gives a more political dimension to the way such agents deal with law.
Mumbai's municipal bureaucracy introduced an online complaints platform in 2016, promising increased transparency and improved public service. This article argues that this "smart" urban technology, ...which records grievances against land encroachments and violations of building codes, strengthens existing class and caste inequalities in who can access and manipulate state land administration. Through an ethnographic exploration of Mumbai's bureaucracy, it makes visible a complex system of negotiation-locally known as "māṇḍavlī"-that structures a range of tacit practices of exchange and mediation between politicians, bureaucrats, and brokers. Although these arrangements remain intact, the online complaints platform has reduced the discretionary power of low-level bureaucrats by centralising and rendering opaque the functioning of ethically ambiguous local brokers. By re-focusing attention on the everyday operation of smart urban technologies within the municipal body in the megacity of Mumbai, this article furthers the agenda of alternative smart urbanisms from the Global South.
Anizman Philip states that discretion starts at the dusk of law and has the potential to inflict justice and injustice. The legal realm of common-law Bangladesh historically evolved from stare ...decisis, which is mostly discretion in the conventionally accepted form. To better understand, specific reliefs, statutory interpretation, grant of bail in a non-bailable offence, and so on are discretionary equitable reliefs. This empirical qualitative study was conducted to expound the undefined concept of judicial discretion, its curb and extent, its possibility of misuse, and its application in the judiciary. Through this study, it has been settled that the scope of the misapplication of discretionary power is comprehensive. External factors such as the good character of a litigant influence discretionary decision-making immensely. Discretion is to courts like water is to a fish. It is inherent, whereby it finds its silver lining in ex debito justitiae. The scope of discretion is voluminous; thereby, greater are its concerns.
Recent evidence indicates that spending discretionary money with the intention of acquiring life experiences-events that one lives through-makes people happier than spending money with the intention ...of acquiring material possessions-tangible objects that one obtains and possesses. We propose and show that experiences are more likely to be shared with others, whereas material possessions are more prone to solitary use and that this distinction may account for their differential effects on happiness. In 4 studies, we present evidence demonstrating that the inclusion of others is a key dimension of how people derive happiness from discretionary spending. These studies showed that when the social-solitary and experiential-material dimensions were considered simultaneously, social discretionary spending was favored over solitary discretionary spending, whereas experiences showed no happiness-producing advantage relative to possessions. Furthermore, whereas spending money on socially shared experiences was valued more than spending money on either experiences enacted alone or material possessions, solitary experiences were no more valued than material possessions. Together, these results extend and clarify the basic findings of prior research and add to growing evidence that the social context of experiences is critical for their effects on happiness.
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