Deborah Agostino, Politecnico di Milano

Enrico Bracci, University of Ferrara

Laurence Ferry, Durham University

Laura Maran, University of Trento

Jarmo Vakkuri, Tampere University

Public sector organisations face competing pressures between financial efficiency and public values such as equity, transparency, and sustainability. These tensions intensify in hybrid governance systems where public, private, and non-profit actors collaborate, and are amplified by digital transformation and emerging technologies. Accounting frameworks are pivotal in mediating or intensifying these conflicts, as calculative devices embed power structures that determine which values become dominant.

This special issue examines how accounting practices and calculative devices influence institutional conflicts between financial imperatives and democratic public values within hybrid governance systems. The call welcomes contributions exploring how calculative tools reshape accountability relations, redistribute authority, stabilise hybrid arrangements, and redefine legitimate accountability across different sectors and contexts.

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Potential topics

• Conceptualisations of institutional tensions and conflicts in accounting and accountability frameworks
• How hybrid forms of accountability emerge at the intersection of competing logics (financial, professional, social, political)
• The role of accounting, performance measurement, and classification systems in mediating or amplifying tensions
• How specific calculative tools (e.g. rankings, integrated reports, ESG scores, algorithms) enact and enforce particular logics and create new visibilities and invisibilities, thereby reconfiguring power relations
• How hybrid organisations devise novel accounting arrangements to navigate their multiple missions and what types of new hybrid accountabilities are thus constructed
• Negotiating accountability across professional, managerial, and citizen arenas in hybrid and collaborative settings
• The impact of sustainability, legitimacy, and digital transformation on accountability regimes
• Accountability in contexts of vulnerability, marginalization, or crisis
• Comparative perspectives on accountability conflicts across institutional fields (e.g. healthcare, prisons, education, cultural organisations, local government)
• Resilience and adaptability of accountability systems under conditions of disruption and uncertainty
• In-depth qualitative case studies across diverse institutional and national contexts
• Comparative and cross-country analyses of accountability practices
• Longitudinal studies exploring the evolution of accountability tensions and hybrid forms
• Critical and interpretive analyses of calculative practices and their performativity
• Historical and archival research on accountability regimes and their institutionalisation
• Studies examining the role of digital technologies and platforms in reshaping accountability
• Interdisciplinary approaches bridging accounting research with sociology, political science, organisational studies, and public administration

Timeline

• September 30, 2026: Submission deadline

Mariannunziata Liguori, Durham University

Noel Hyndman, Queen's University Belfast

Henry Midgley, Durham University

Tjerk Budding, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Laurence Ferry, Durham University

Patricia Gomes, Polytechnic University of Cávado and Ave

This special issue examines management control practices within public-service organisations, including government agencies, nonprofits, and charities. Control systems encompass cost control, budgeting, performance measurement, and accountability mechanisms. Public-service organisations face unique challenges compared to for-profit entities, including multiple objectives, diverse stakeholders, and social missions that must be evaluated and communicated to both external and internal audiences.

The special issue addresses a research gap regarding the current role and design of internal organisational controls in public services. It seeks contributions exploring how control systems function individually and collectively, how they shape dialogue among stakeholders, and how they influence the creation of public value. The editors welcome diverse methodological approaches and international comparative studies on management control, performance measurement frameworks, budgeting practices, and accountability dynamics in public-service contexts.

Appel publié par Financial Accountability and Management. Voir l'appel sur le site de l'éditeur. Fiche de l'appel sur kerostig.

Potential topics

• Different forms and roles of management-control practices
• The interaction between performance-measurement frameworks and controls
• Linkages between non-financial performance targets and financial allocations in the budget process
• The potential for (and consequences of) the over-use of non-financial performance targets and the embracing of 'simple' (or simplistic) overall performance frameworks
• The alignment of performance targets at various organisational and inter-organisational levels
• Studies of contexts where the use of judgement in decision making is (or should be) paramount, and the possible consequences when it is not
• How internal and external controls work together and their effects on public-service provision
• How performance-measurement frameworks can be constructed using the participation of different stakeholder groups
• Different forms of budgeting and their development over time
• The exploring of contexts where tight-central budgeting and looser more-flexible budgeting systems might be beneficial
• The historical evolution of internal control
• The role of boards, controllers and line managers in the context of different organisational budgeting and performance-management systems
• Inter-organisational controls and practices
• How service users (or beneficiaries) contribute to shaping control and accountability processes
• How nonprofit organisations contribute to the delivery of public services in a perspective of network governance

Timeline

• July 16, 2027: Submission deadline

Rebecca Warren, Northumbria University

Anne Steinhoff, University of Essex

Jeremy Morales, University of Bristol

Susan O'Leary, University of London

Ileana Steccolini, University of Essex

This special issue examines accountability as a mechanism for enabling social change and democratic participation across multiple levels of organization. Rather than reinforcing conventional accountability frameworks, the editors seek to reimagine how accountability practices can support collective, citizen-led initiatives and challenge existing power structures through dialogic, decolonial, feminist, and environmental approaches.

The call welcomes diverse submission formats beyond traditional research articles, including methodological reflections on participatory research, practice notes developed with activists and practitioners, and experimental visual presentations. Contributions should engage with transformative accountability as a situated, relational process that attends to lived experiences and examines transformation from local community practices to large-scale systemic change.

Appel publié par Financial Accountability and Management. Voir l'appel sur le site de l'éditeur. Fiche de l'appel sur kerostig.

Potential topics

• Conceptualising transformative accountability: beyond compliance with traditional practices and the critique of alternatives - what makes accountability transformative?
• Accountability beyond a principal-agent focus: mutual, collective and relational forms, where stakeholders have assumed accountability and created shared stewardship
• Engaging in citizens-led accountability, including, for example community organising and social movements such as campaigns, coalitions and assemblies as sites of transformative accountability
• Prefiguration and the struggle for transformation: How do alternative accountability practices engage in prefigurative practices and politics?
• Relational accountability as transformative: How do dialogic and participatory practices foster transformative accountability?
• Methodologies for engaged, messy research: including approaches to an ethics of care, positionality, co-production in research and navigating risk and harm in such research
• Explorations of how disclosures are interpreted, mobilised or re-appropriated by communities and movements
• Different levels and scales of transformation, from the individual to the systematic or structural and the mechanisms that enable transformative accountability at different levels
• Decolonial, feminist and environmental perspectives that challenge coloniality and neoliberal logics in accountability
• Pedagogies of transformative accountability and transformative learning
• Consequences and limits: when transformative accountability backfires or become performative
• Academic engagement: How can researchers move beyond critique to co-creation of transformative accountability practices? Explorations of the ways that we as academics can engage in impactful and transformative forms of accountability

Timeline

• July 30, 2027: Submission Deadline