Purpose In contexts where climate policy is fragmented, corporate actors play a central role in shaping responses to climate change. This study examines how sustainability managers in large Australian companies articulate the relationships between business, society and the natural environment over time, and how these articulations inform understandings of climate accountability.Design/methodology/approach Drawing on an interpretive framework inspired by Marcus et al. (2010) and a reflexive approach to interview data, the study analyzes accounts provided by sustainability managers from ASX200 companies at two points in time (2016 and 2020). The analysis traces shifts in how business-society-nature relationships are framed, without assuming linear change or causal attribution.Findings The findings indicate a discernible change in emphasis over time. While managers' accounts in 2016 tended to frame climate change primarily through compliance-oriented and economically bounded considerations, accounts in 2020 more frequently emphasized interdependence between business, society and the natural environment, alongside heightened attention to climate-related responsibility and risk. These shifts are interpreted as changes in framing rather than as uniform or complete transformations in practice.Research limitations/implications The study develops an interpretive mapping approach from Marcus et al. (2010) that enables systematic longitudinal analysis of how organizational actors articulate climate accountability. While based on a qualitative sample, the approach offers a structured way to examine evolving views on climate accountability across time and contexts.Originality/value The paper contributes to accounting and accountability research by offering a reflexive, longitudinal examination of sustainability managers' views of business-society-nature relationships, advancing understanding of how climate accountability is interpreted and articulated within large organizations.

Pricing is commonly portrayed as an economically rational practice responsive to competitive conditions; however, the persistence of cost-plus pricing during institutional transition remains insufficiently explained. This study examines how such persistence is reproduced amid economic liberalisation. Drawing on ter Bogt and Scapens’ (2019) concept of situated rationality, pricing is conceptualised as an organisational practice shaped by historically embedded calculative artefacts, approval infrastructures and accountability arrangements. The analysis is based on an in-depth qualitative case study of a manufacturing firm, drawing on 24 semi-structured interviews, more than 40 organisational documents and extensive field observations. The findings show that, despite intensified market-oriented evaluation—manifested in import competition, benchmarking and profitability pressures—authorised price formation remained anchored in cost-recovery reasoning. This persistence is explained through three interrelated dynamics: differential institutionalisation, which accorded cost-recovery reasoning greater procedural authority within pricing infrastructures; recursive material reinforcement, whereby deteriorating market conditions increased calculated unit costs under absorption costing and raised the internally defensible price floor; and structured situated agency, whereby managerial judgement remained reflexive yet constrained by accounting artefacts and approval routines. The study contributes by demonstrating how accounting infrastructures mediate organisational responses to liberalisation and condition the relative authority of competing rationalities during regime transition.

The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly disrupted global economies, social structures, and public finance systems, exposing vulnerabilities in essential services and exacerbating inequalities. This special issue explores the intersection of sustainability imperatives and the reshaping of public finance and accounting in the post-pandemic world. The contributions critically examine whether, and how, accounting can address the challenges posed by the pandemic while advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.​ Key topics include the role of accounting discourses in reshaping stakeholder relationships through accountability narratives, the integration of SDGs into public financial management, the impact of economic fluctuations on healthcare budgeting, the financialization of housing policy, trade credit dynamics during crises, the evolution of social investment practices, and the role of foreign direct investment in infrastructure development. In this editorial, we discuss how the articles highlight both the transformative potential of accounting and financial management in fostering sustainable development, as well as tensions in accounting’s role in perpetuating inequalities and democratic deficiencies in ‘official’ accounting narratives. We also outline areas for further research, including greater depth and diversity in studies of public accounting practices, exploration of novel accounting technologies in making outcomes and systemic issues more visible, challenging the epistemic authority of unsustainable practices and collaborating with communities to build authentic alternatives.

Purpose The key motivation of our research is to explore the complexities of management control in a complicated process of palm oil production setting. We seek to unpack the ways in which refinery operations staff (re)construct adaptive practices to manage temporal uncertainties and competing obsessions to effectively control the volatile and highly uncertain palm oil production processes of a large refinery in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach Our research adopts a qualitative methodology, framed around an ethnographic case study that utilizes multiple methods of data collection and analysis including observations, interviews, and document analysis. We observe how the key production processes and conduct eighty-one interviews with managers and workers who engage in inter-retro-actions around organizational decisions to prioritise a market aesthetic that results in highly uncertain manufacturing processes in the complex setting of palm oil refining. Findings Using the lens of improvisation in a complex organizational process (Amit and Knowles, 2017; Cunha et al ., 2017; Weick, 2024), we explore the ambitious yet complex production dynamics, and the competing control pressures to meet an acceptable aesthetic quality within an acceptable cost of palm oil production. Our findings provide insight into how actors construct improvised incremental control across the palm oil production processes. Our findings provide a better understanding of how complex production processes such as palm oil face temporal uncertainties that lead to the necessity to craft temporal adaptive process routines. Originality/value We contribute by revealing the temporality of flexible control where actors cultivate temporary buffers or momentary improvisations to manage temporal uncertainties in a complex process industry setting. We uncover the fluid site of control where actors engage in temporary coordination of in-present-improvisational actions to alter temporal uncertainties due to attending to competing targets. We contend that much can be learned about interpersonal autonomous control in managing volatility and repairing control breakdowns in complex production processes that cannot simply be forecasted with sufficient accuracy. We believe that interpersonal reflection-in-actions becomes a necessity when standardized or controlled environments seek to achieve contradictory goals.

Government audit services provided by state auditors are frequently beset by complex and often emotional engagements with the auditees. Both auditors and auditees are subjected to multiple yet conflicting socio-political rationalities, administrative demands, and complex performance measurements. Auditees often perceive these interactions as a source of burden, fear, frustration, anxiety, and, at times, resistance or even revulsion regarding the audit process. Our ethnographic case study shows that the Indonesian government auditors and auditees employ the arts of the emotional self, as they feel burdened with the potential shame and blame that might result from an unsuccessful audit. Our study provides insights into how the quasi-judicial rationalities and bureaucratic demands manifested in various indices of performance imposed upon auditors and auditees lead to the critical need to achieve unqualified audit opinions. The pressures of ensuring a successful audit and reputation maintenance stimulate the enfolding of emotionalities in different stages of the audit process. Our study reveals auditor-auditee engagement in therapeutic governance as a mediation strategy to avoid the enfolding of shame or blame around a failure to achieve the targeted audit performance. In such a complex audit setting, both parties engage in pragmatic technological actions by administering shifts in roles and fostering familiarity to coproduce audit evidence.

Purpose This paper aims to use a perspective informed by practice theory to examine the influence of change agents in enacting management control systems (MCS) in the process of shaping strategy. Design/methodology/approach The research uses a case study approach to examine the implementation of a business strategy in the utility sector. The authors seek a better understanding of practice theory and its role in influencing institutional change and stability. Findings The case study findings show that the change agents enacted MCS practices that aided the metamorphosis of a once state-owned company into a for-profit enterprise. The findings show how the organisation transformed from a long-established preoccupation with technical systems and engineering and shifted to a focus on customer satisfaction and shareholder interests. Research limitations/implications In terms of policy implications, bureaucrats need to appreciate that inculcating business norms is not an easy path and can be met with resistance, which creates delays in strategy implementation. The current study, while reporting some of the influences of tribal loyalty, was nevertheless limited by not having the time and space to examine in-depth the intersections of MCS and strategy within a strongly tribal context. This can be an avenue for future research. Practical implications The study helps to understand embedded actors in the implementation of strategy by refocusing research on the actions and interactions of strategy implementation practitioners. Originality/value The authors contribute to the literature by seeking to use practice theory and offer a valuable understanding, from the actor level, of how practices are created and enacted. Often accounting studies have paid less attention to the change agents in the process of shaping business-oriented strategic activity. This study enabled us to gain a better understanding of the action and practice behaviour around the strategy-MCS nexus.

Purpose This study examines green investment reforms carried out in Bangladesh. The reform process curated significant changes by promoting green investment and fostering the adoption of risk management (RM) rationalities. This study's focus is on revealing changes in behaviour and explaining how RM can act as an effective generator of climate change mitigation practices. Design/methodology/approach Building on Foucault's concept of governmentality, the authors apply a "green governmentality" interpretive lens to analyse interviews and documentary evidence, adopting a qualitative case study approach. The authors explore how green governmentality generates RM rationalities and techniques to induce policies and practices within banks and financial institutions (FIs) for climate change mitigation purposes. Findings The findings provide valuable insights into the reform process and influence of RM rationalities in the context of environmental concerns. The authors find that the reforms and creation of RM rationalities affect the management of climate mitigation practices within banks and FIs and identify the processes through which the RM techniques are transformed as climate concerns are emphasised. The authors illustrate green governmentality as persuasive strategies, which have generated specific ways of seeing climate change reality and new ways of inserting RM into organisational activities, through the green governmentality effects they created. These reforms made climate change actionable and governable through the production of RM rationalities, supported by accounting conceptualisations and processes. Research limitations/implications The insights from this study can assist with how we act upon questions of climate change from an RM perspective. Governments, policymakers and regulators who develop climate change-related laws, regulations and policies can draw on these insights to help foster green governmentality for climate change mitigation actions informed by RM practices. Originality/value This study offers insights into how climate change is not simply a biophysical reality but a site of power-knowledge dynamics where RM rationalities are constructed, and accounting processes are transformed. The authors show the application of RM and accounting efforts to change investment practices and how changes were encouraged and promoted by using regulation as a persuasive force on knowledgeable subjects rather than a repressive or oppressive power. The analytic power of green governmentality can be applied to increase understanding of how RM rationality contribute to the creation of useful conceptualisations of climate change and provide insights into how organisations respond to green governmentality.

Purpose This case study presents a critical analysis of why and how corporate managers in China are reluctant to adopt sustainability reporting assurance (SRA) provided by externally independent third-party assurers, despite the fact that it is acknowledged as a value-adding activity globally. Design/methodology/approach A longitudinal fieldwork case study was conducted from 2014 to 2019 in a Chinese central state-owned enterprise (CSOE), a pioneer in sustainability reporting practice since the mid-2000s, to collect first-hand empirical data on managerial perceptions of the adoption of external SRA. Semi-structured interviews with 25 managers involved in sustainability (reporting) practice were conducted. The interview data were triangulated with an analysis of archival documents and board meeting minutes pertaining to the undertakings of sustainability practices in the case study organization. Findings Our empirical analysis suggests that while managers recognize the benefits of adopting external SRA in enhancing the legitimacy of sustainability accountability, they oppose SRA because of their deep-rooted allegiance to the dominant logic of sociopolitical stability in China. SRA is envisaged to risk the stability of the socialist ideology with which CSOEs are imbued. Therefore, any transformational approach to accepting a novel (foreign) practice must be molded to gain control and autonomy, thereby maintain the hegemony of stability logic. Instead of disregarding external verification, managers of our case SOE appear to harness sustainability reporting as a navigational space to engage in internally crafted alternative manners in order to resist the rationality of SRA. Originality/value The empirical analysis presents a nuanced explanation as to why internal managers have hitherto been reluctant to embrace the embedding of independent assurance into the sustainability reporting process. Our prolonged fieldwork provides ample context-specific, intra-organizational evidence regarding the absence of SRA in Chinese CSOEs, which warrants more attention given their considerable presence in the global economy. In addition, the empirical analysis contributes to our understanding of the managerial capture of sustainability issues in a specific context of state capitalism and how organizations and individuals in an authoritarian regime interpret and respond to novel discourses derived from distinct institutional settings.

Big data and analytics offer new opportunities and challenges for academics and practitioners in all business disciplines including accounting and auditing. In the backdrop of increasing growth of emerging technologies, the organizations in public, private and not-for-profit sectors are embracing digital economy and the fourth industrial revolution journey. This requires knowledge of better practice examples, lessons learned and future directions in addressing the new challenges and seizing new opportunities. In this chapter, we discuss the implications of data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning on the accounting and auditing practices. We focus on the technological, social, political, economic, institutional, and behavioral aspects of these technologies in the public, private, non-governmental and hybrid contexts. We present state-of-the-art research directions on philosophical, theoretical, methodological, and practical issues, new developments and innovations of big data, analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, cryptocurrencies and other emerging technologies related to accounting and auditing.

How can we investigate something so indeterminate, unpredictable and enormous, as the current Covid-19 pandemic? We apply Karen Barad’s relational ontology to illuminate some current dilemmas in research, where different forces, concepts and theories conflict with one another in multiple and complex ways. Barad’s views, we argue, may help to address potential dilemmas of accountability, for instance of accounting research(ers) as they research the Covid-19 pandemic. In what Barad calls ‘intra-action’, the research apparatus, the researched phenomena,andthe research results, constitute a complex system of relatedness. In ‘intra-action’ these elements never fully melt into one another, but rather, retain their ontological individuality. The research apparatus creates ‘real’ effects, but these can only be partially observed and disentangled. Which elements intra-act as the research progresses is the product of so-called ‘agential cuts’. We have researched the Covid-19 pandemic via what Barad would call a (small-scale) ‘experiment’. We have focused on air travel and more specifically on American Airlines: a hyperobject or social-economic object so complex and powerful that it cannot be captured in any single definition or analysis. Among others, we take guidance from Albert Camus’ The Plague in our analysis, concluding that AA (as a hyperobject) cannot really meet the research(ers) halfway, as Barad would call for. This is because the mutuality of ‘intra-action’, that is demanded is foreclosed. Consequently, while we believe that Barad’s views hold great merit for accounting research in the current crisis, we suggest that they raise deeply troubling dilemmas as well.

Purpose This paper reports an investigation of a hybrid ex-state-owned enterprise (ex-SOE) providing ICT (Information and Communication Technology) services in the Italian healthcare sector (in-house provision). The authors aim to offer a framing that reflects the concerns expressed in the interdisciplinary literature on hybrid SOEs from management, public administration and, more recently, accounting. Design/methodology/approach This study operationalizes Besharov and Smith’s (2014) theoretical model on multiple logics to analyze institutional structures and organizational outcomes at an ICT in-house provider. It builds on extensive textual analysis of regulatory, archival, survey and interview data. Findings The study results show that the combination of hybridity in the form of layering of multiple logics in the health care sector (Polzer et al. , 2016) creates problems for the effectiveness of ICT provision. In particular, the hybrid organization the authors study remained stuck in established competing relationships despite a restructure of regional health care governance. The study findings also reflect on the design of organizational control mechanisms when balancing different logics. Research limitations/implications The identified case-study accountability practices and performance system add to the debate on hybrid organizations in the case of ex-SOEs and facilitate the understanding and management of hybrids in the public sector. The authors note policymaking implications. Originality/value The authors’ operationalization of Besharov and Smith's (2014) model adds clarity to key elements of their model, notably how to identify evidence in order to disentangle notions of centrality and compatibility. By doing this, the authors’ analysis offers potential insights into both managerial design and policy prescription. The authors provide cautionary tales around institutional reorganization regarding the layered synthesis of logics within these organizations.

This study contributes to social studies of accounting and finance by engaging concepts from the Communities of Practice (CoP) to explain intermediation practices in the Social Impact Investing (SII) sector. We use data from a field study to investigate how community-like practices shape the impact investing market. We have studied the valuation practices of impact investment intermediaries and how they tackle the complexity of value plurality in terms of social and financial investment outcomes. We find that SII intermediaries are primarily aligned with investors and their financial market logic of financial risk and return without broader consideration of social returns. We also find that when actors are faced with making rational choices within ambiguities and conflicts, their judgements are grounded in what is their familiar notion of value. Focusing on the dimensions of boundary activities by intermediaries, this research contributes to the dynamics of participation and collaboration in a new sphere of financial markets. The role of intermediaries is conceptualized as boundary spanners producing and using boundary objects in the production and modification of practices of intermediation. Measurement tools respond to the meshing of human rationality about social impact with the impact indicators. SII actors use diverse methods and tools to measure social value without a corresponding level of dialogue on what is valuable and how it should be measured. Measurement tools are not adequate in an independent capacity but create a degree of comparability that can help the SII sector to develop an ongoing understanding of value.

PurposeThe paper offers insights on the response of a Big4 firm to the COVID-19 crisis vis-à-vis moral considerations. More specifically, the authors draw on Bauman's (1990) “moral impulse” to explore how the interrelated tactics of distancing, effacement of the face and reduction of people to traits tend to weaken moral considerations and negatively influences decisions and actions.Design/methodology/approachThe authors adopt a qualitative approach that involves an interpretive textual analysis of the COVID-19 responses of a Big 4 accounting firm. Their study uses two vignettes in which they problematise aspects of the actions and ethico-social contribution of a Big4 firm in the heat of a global pandemic.FindingsThe findings reveal examples of effacement of the human face (depersonalization/dehumanization) and reduction of persons to traits, as well as excessive distancing between the “doing” actors and those individuals who bear the consequences of those actions. Revealing an opportunity lost, the authors’ vignettes indicate that the reduction to traits tactics led to dissembling and dehumanizing employees into resources that perform tasks that are “value-add” for the organisation, consonant with neoliberal ideologies.Research limitations/implicationsThe common limitations of qualitative approach apply to the current study for generalisability. The authors also rely heavily on publicly available information given the time frame they were faced with and their chosen research approach.Social implicationsDrawing on accounting delineation debates, the paper calls for societal dialogues for reshaping the “official” accounting of events.Originality/valueThe authors elaborate moral impulse through the interrelated tactics of distancing, effacement of the face and reduction to traits, during a crisis. Their study mobilises a moral evaluation through which they uncover documented responses by a Big4 firm during the COVID-19 crisis. The study shows how the norms of human action have been systematically cut off from the original moral habitat and subordinated, and evaluated according, to business standards.

The Office of the Auditor General, Republic of Fiji was founded in 1970 on audit principles and national laws inspired by its former British colonial power. The Fijian Office operates in a challenging national context of coup-determined regimes, military authority and ethnically-dividing social practices. The purpose of this study is to uncover the processes and dynamics that explain how this Office remains a stable institution despite its challenging environment. We seek to understand how members of Fiji's Office of the Auditor General comprehend their role, find meaning in their actions and negotiate their authority in the context of powerful others. Our approach is qualitative and employs data from 28 interviews conducted over 12 years and historical documents. Our findings take into account wider social processes and reveal that through shared commitment and international associationism the Office of the Auditor General comes to absorb the norms and values of its westernised professional organizations. The contribution of the study is in revealing how external professional bodies and an empowered internal rationale can construct an institutional discourse that offers the potential for social stability even where local resistance is strong.

The 2011 Egyptian revolution was associated with significant political and social upheaval, followed by societal changes and attempts by policymakers to reduce the marginalisation of women and promote their inclusion in the economy. Drawing on this background, the authors compare the effect of board gender diversity before and after the revolution. Results indicate that gender diversity in corporate boards is coupled with improvements in firm performance in the immediate post revolution phase. This evidence provides insights into the contextual factors related to diversity and performance relationship and supporting arguments for regulatory changes to further encourage women’s representation on boards.

Purpose Using a dialogic approach to narrative analysis through the lens of fairytale, this paper explores the shared construction of corporate environmental stories. The analysis provided aims to reveal the narrative messaging which is implicit in corporate reporting, to contrast corporate and stakeholder narratives and to bring attention to the ubiquity of storytelling in corporate communications. Design/methodology/approach This paper examines a series of events in which a single case company plays the central role. The environmental section of the case company's sustainability report is examined through the lens of fairytale analysis. Next, two counter accounts are constructed which foreground multiple stakeholder accounts and retold as fairytales. Findings The dialogic nature of accounts plays a critical role in how stakeholders understand the environmental impacts of a company. Storytelling mechanisms have been used to shape the perspective and sympathies of the report reader in favour of the company. We use these same mechanisms to create two collective counter accounts which display different sympathies. Research limitations/implications This research reveals how the narrative nature of corporate reports may be used to fabricate a particular perspective through storytelling. By doing so, it challenges the authority of the version of events provided by the company and gives voice to collective counter accounts which are shared by and can be disseminated to other stakeholders. Originality/value This paper provides a unique perspective to understanding corporate environmental reporting and the stories shared by and with external stakeholders by drawing from a novel link between fairytale, storytelling and counter accounting.

This paper explores the way in which ethico-faith-based rules act as a boundary object in constraining the process of financial innovation and engineering (FIE) in Islamic Financial Institutions (IFIs). The paper examines how this faith-based approach is enacted in the FIE process amid different social worlds and groups that cooperate without consensus within IFIs. We contribute to studies of governance in faith-based organizations, by identifying the plasticity of faith-based rules that act as boundary objects in the governance of the FIE process. The plasticity of ethico-faith based rules allows coordination among local and global actors with intersecting faith-based values, logics, and interests. IFIs ensure that the products of FIE become an integral part of and as compatible as possible with the logics of global financial markets.

The third sector encompasses many types of not-for-profit organisations (NPOs). This results in a diverse sector, where accountabilities vary and are complex. In this paper, we explore notions of accountability at the micro level of social analysis, between individuals, and enacted through social interaction. We aim to provide detail on how accountability is enacted at this level of analysis, and the role(s) of trust (if any) in this form of accountability. We employ a theoretical framework incorporating the theoretical constructs of accountability, trust and 'the Other', with additional support derived from literature that specifically discusses the relationship(s) between accountability, the Other and wider ethics. We employ a qualitative methodological framework, with two sources of data. The primary source of data included 42 semi-structured interviews conducted with service club members, along with representatives of donor organisations, beneficiary organisations and local government. In addition, documentary evidence was utilised in support of the primary data gathered. Following the application of qualitative data analysis techniques, we conclude that, at the micro level of social analysis, trust and accountability are intertwined concepts. We observed that the main mechanism for the discharge of accountability was via the formation and maintenance of personal relationships between members of the service club and key external stakeholders. We also conclude that charity offers individuals a means by which to particularise aspects of the Other, through the undertaking of charitable action. Within this particularisation process, facilitated by connecting with other individuals, accountability not only takes a different form than more hierarchical forms of accountability, but also serves to build interconnectedness between individuals, and provide satisfaction of the desire for the Other in volunteers and stakeholders alike.