The Parish in the Audit Society

What happens when global market-oriented models for auditing and quality assessment are taken up by local parishes? The paper is based on case studies where a number of parishes and auditing models provide the object of study. Parishes are to some extent restrictive about embracing new ideas on auditing and quality control. With assistance from neo-institutional theory it can be shown that the concepts bring with them norms of an “ideal organization”: the market based independent actor with control over its resources and boundaries. Actors from the surrounding “auditing society” contribute to a shifting of the focus for control in the Church of Sweden: from the beliefs and lives of the members to the resources and behaviour of the organization. By adopting a concept such as Balanced Scorecard the parish priest’s role as manager, with a leadership hierarchy and boundaries, is made clear