Interactions and Interrogations: Negotiating and Performing Value for Money Reports

This paper explores the interactions, mediations and interrogations at play by the different actors involved in the final stages of the Value for Money reporting process. The VFM auditing arena is a complex setting with groups of actors carrying out various and at times, conflicting roles. Drawing on the dramaturgical writings of Goffman, the paper examines the ways in which these actors create and manage impressions of themselves. Differences in style, tone and rhetoric are analysed to understand the way in which key parties perform to their audiences. The paper shows how the cautionary style of VFM reports is mediated with the auditees and then elaborated and improvised by the Public Accounts Committee to construct drama into the final accountability process. It is argued that through the process of writing and presenting VFM reports, auditors, MPs and auditees perform roles to manage their identities and address expectations of their audiences.