CALL FOR PAPERS: What is the future of public accountability in the aftermath of crisis?
Paper Submission deadline: 30 September 2022
The International Centre of Public Accountability (ICOPA) at Durham University is delighted to announce its first international workshop “What is the future of public accountability in the aftermath of crisis?” that will be held at Durham University on 12 -13 December 2022.
The recent years have seen an unprecedented stream of unexpected events, such as Brexit, the Covid- 19 pandemic and environmental disasters, that have highlighted the importance of managing crises and accounting for them. Effects of similar unexpected upheavals, as well as the effects of any other type of organisational crisis, interweave with the very fabric of society and organisational life, often creating new states of the world and favouring the introduction of new and innovative practices (Liguori, 2012; Hyndman et al., 2019). In this context, the most recent research has investigated the role of accounting during organisational upheavals and change (Hyndman and Liguori 2019; Masquefa et al., 2017; Alsharari, 2020), during extreme events (Wilson et al., 2010; Lapsley, 2020; Ahrens and Ferry, 2021) and natural disasters (Lai et al., 2014; Matilal and Adhikari, 2019), as well as accounting as a tool for organisational resilience (Barbera et al., 2017). Accounting also has a long-term role in the way that societies cope with crisis: both in the contemporary world (Tooze, 2018) and historically (Daunton, 2001), practises of accounting have been contested mechanisms for re-establishing power and legitimacy after crisis.
The workshop, and the related Special Issue, will focus on considering the relationship between accounting practices, in their broad sense, and the aftermath of crisis.
The workshop welcomes contributions on all aspects of public-sector and public-service accounting, auditing, performance management and control, budgeting and accountability. Different and innovative methodological approaches are encouraged.
The workshop will be organised as a live event (with possible hybrid solutions, if necessary, to comply with the Covid-19 regulations of the time). The papers submitted to the workshop will be included for consideration in a related Special Issue of Abacus. Submission to the workshop implies that authors wish to be considered for the Special Issue.