Evaluating the Quality of Organization: Audits

Since the 1980ies, audits have developed towards a fundamental tool in business life. Realized as a question-answer interaction, well-trained auditors evaluate the application and effectiveness of defined requirements. By now, there are several types of audits, among those the “quality audit” is supposed to be the most important one. If audits are driven by customers, their results qualify a supplying company for the contract – or they don’t. It can be assumed that there are conflicting goals at work: auditors try to identify the strengths and weaknesses on a content level, auditees want to gain a good evaluation. But what happens, if an auditee knows that he does not comply with defined procedures? Based on a real example of a quality audit this article shows what kind of communicative strategies are to be applied by both participants to realize their goals.