The Post-audit of Capital Projects: A Learning Opportunity

This study looks into the post-audit of capital projects in large UK organisations. We focus on the aspect of organisational learning theory as a process of continuous improvement, learning from past experience, especially in the management decision-making paradigm. We discovered nine important reasons for undertaking post-audits and ten for not. An important observation is that while those organisations which do not undertake post-audits attach a greater level of importance to ¿the reasons for not carrying out post-audits¿ and ¿the problems faced in the implementation of post-audits¿, these difficulties have been overcome by those organisations that undertake post-audits. We argue that training the non-users to overcome the perceived difficulties would enhance the investment decision-making process by encouraging them to learn from the experience of those that undertake post-audits. The respondents to our research consist of some of the most senior executives from the largest UK organisations and their views on academic issues are, in many cases, difficult to obtain; this research therefore has value in this respect. Our findings point the way to new lines of enquiry in this field.