Auditism: Symptoms, Safety Consequences, Causes, and Cure

Abstract

AbstractThis text is a reflection on today’s organisational management, through an imagined disease, auditism. The empirical material for this reflection is collected mainly in the shipping and aquaculture industries, but other type of data suggest auditism may be prevalent in other industries too. Auditism is diagnosed when and where the idea of audits shapes how work is structured, performed, or talked about in a working environment. Symptoms of auditism are related to organisations’ management of quality and safety—safety clutter, illegitimate core tasks, and an experience of two realities in an organisation (one for ‘real work’ and the other for ‘bullshit’ tasks or administration). Causes are function-based regulations and shallow audit regimes, as well as societal trends of how to prove legitimacy, accountability, liability, and efficiency. A cure could come through improved methods for auditing and documentation, or through trust in professional judgement instead of audits. Still, the prognosis is that many organisations will suffer from auditism before prescribing to reliable remedies.