PERFORMANCE AUDIT’S PERCEIVED CONCEPT AND ROLE EXPECTATION: IS IT CONFORMITY OR CONFLICT?

Extant accounting literature has broadly investigated expectation gap in audit context. Previous research reveals the existence of conflict which refer to role concept whether in the expectation of auditor role, response to audit output, or understanding of auditee’s business process. Meanwhile, observation from internal organization’s point of view is still limited whereas the urgency of evaluating performance and maintaining organizational excellence are escalating. Examining performance audit in service organization, this study qualitatively observed perception and expectation of stakeholders on performance audit concept using role theory framework. Role theory posits some propositions in relation to patterns of behavior to which individuals can be in conformity or can be in conflict in terms of compatibility to expectation of others. Semi structured interview with participant’s observer is performed in this study to investigate key stakeholders in the organization. Interesting result emerges which shows the existence of practicality concept instead of conformity. In addition, expectation of such impact from performance evaluation is equally the same among different stakeholders except on the perceived quantity measure. Important implication of this study result is further discussed.