Public Accountability in an Unpredictable World: Tales of the Unexpected

Recent years have seen an unprecedented stream of unexpected events. This includes, among others, the financial crisis following the 2007/2008 ‘Great Recession’, the COVID-19 pandemic, environmental disasters, the conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine, and the ongoing and high-profile migrant crisis that has affected a range of countries (Hodges and Lapsley, 2016; Dabbicco et al., 2022; Parker, 2024). A feature of the emergence of such crises (times of intense difficulty or danger) has been how they have affected organizations (including public- and third-sector entities) that are responsible for public service delivery. Responding to crises frequently affects how such organizations are managed, touches on how they produce ‘accounts’ of various types, and requires them to reflect on (and possibly adjust) accountability processes. Relatedly, crises have the capacity to impact on potentially-compromised external legitimacy. Effects of such unexpected upheavals, as well as the effects of any other type of organizational crisis, interweave with the very fabric of society and organizational life, often creating new states of the world and favouring the introduction of new and innovative practices (Liguori, 2012; Hyndman and Liguori, 2019; Broadbent, 2020; Salterio, 2020).

Public-service organizations (PSOs), be they public-sector entities or third-sector concerns, are pervasive and distinctive in most societies. Given the nature of numerous contemporary crises, and in view of the structural configurations for social provision present in many countries, these organizations are regularly viewed as those that pick up the slack. This is particularly the case when other organizational forms of engagement (e.g., via business organizations) are unlikely to be overly motivated to respond to emerging issues (Hyndman et al., 2024). Specific characteristics that make PSOs different include: they are normally not-for-profit; they often focus on missions relating to the provision of broad social, cultural, and/or economic benefits to citizens generally (or to specific disadvantaged sections of society in particular); and, frequently, their funding is not tied to the ability of the specific recipient of a good or service to pay for its provision. In such a context, accountability (a term often broadly related to a duty to explain actions and plans, and justify them) is critical. In PSOs, this is often expressed via the term ‘public accountability’, although, as with ‘accountability’ itself, this is difficult to define in concrete terms and markedly nuanced in relation to how any accountability process might operate. Moreover, given the many stakeholder groups that appear to have a legitimate interest in what PSOs do, it is habitually more complex than ‘private’ forms of accountability that operate in the business sector and privilege the information needs, and engagement of, providers of finance (Hyndman and McKillop, 2018).

In this setting, recent research has investigated the role of accounting and accountability during organizational upheavals and change (Masquefa et al., 2017; Hyndman and Liguori, 2019; Alsharari, 2020) and extreme events (Wilson et al., 2010; Lapsley, 2020; Ahrens and Ferry, 2021), including natural disasters (Lai et al., 2014; Matilal and Adhikari, 2019). Relatedly, recent research on accounting and accountability in PSOs has examined accounting and accountability systems as supports to the building of organizational resilience (i.e., the ability of a PSO to endure or recover rapidly from a crisis) (Boin and van Eeten, 2013; Barbera et al., 2017, 2023; van Helden et al., 2024). Similarly, accounting and accountability processes can be regarded as having long-term roles in the way that societies cope with crisis, both in the contemporary world (Tooze, 2018; Cui et al., 2019; Hellowell et al., 2019) and historically (Daunton, 2001). Here, such mechanisms have been considered as contested devices for re-establishing power and legitimacy after crisis.

Accountability, decision-making, and control mechanisms assume particular nuances during periods of crisis and change. The papers included in this special issue explore crises from a range of perspectives: from historical crisis-grounded investigations and case-based research that provide rich narratives of the emergence of and response to crisis, to comparisons of an international crisis across a range of jurisdictional settings, to research that illustrates how counter-accountability processes may emerge in crisis situations. This lead paper in the special issue provides a wide canvas that speaks into these varied settings.

PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY

Defining accountability in terms of ‘explaining or justifying what has been done, what is currently being done, and what has been planned’ (Jackson, 1982, p. 220) is seen as being predominantly concerned with the giving of information. Emphasizing a broader view of the concept, Roberts and Scapens (1985, p. 447) describe it as a requirement to explain and take responsibility for actions through ‘the giving and demanding of reasons for conduct’. In a similar light, Fry (1995) considers accountability in terms of ‘public account-giving’ that might include ‘justifications, rationalisations, stories, excuses’ (p. 184). This relationship between the accountee (the giver of an account) and the accountor (the demander of the account) (Bergsteiner, 2013) is commonly summarized in terms of a principal–agent relationship. In such a scenario, the principal (the accountor) may transfer to an agent (the accountee), resources and/or expectations regarding the transfer. These expectations then influence the basis of the accountability relationship (Laughlin, 1990, 1996; Hyndman and Anderson, 1997). Such views on accountability, generally associated with a hierarchical connection between the giver and the demander of accounts, are primarily concerned with external accountability, although the importance of a more self-reflective and self-evaluative form of accountability is also frequently highlighted (Bergsteiner, 2013).

In relation to the above, consideration of the direction of accountability relationships is also important. Is it upward (possibly to providers of finance or to political masters), downward (to the recipients of service, to beneficiaries, or to society at large), or horizontal (to those within the same entity and at approximately the same organizational level)? Well-framed and contextualized accountability processes have the potential to underpin external legitimacy (Suchman, 1995) and support effective management in responding to (and learning from) crises as organizations anticipate and react to them (Boin and van Eeten, 2013; Barbera et al., 2017; Hyndman, 2020; Ahrens and Ferry, 2021). In addition, the diverse range of stakeholder groups with respect to PSOs (and their contestable, and possibly competing, saliency) makes choices regarding prioritization and focus challenging for the accountee, much more so than is usually the case in the business sector (Stapleton and Woodward, 2009; Connolly et al., 2013; Hyndman and McKillop, 2019; Parker et al., 2021).

When the focus is on ‘public accountability’, rather than merely ‘accountability’, the above issues largely persist, albeit with a slightly different emphasis. The term is largely restricted in use to situations where public sector (or, more widely, public service) providers are involved. Here it is viewed as being about an organization (or a sector at large) demonstrating its competence, reliability, and honesty in a manner that permits the public to evaluate its trustworthiness in using public money and public resources (C&AG NZ, 2016). However, discussions regarding its diverse nature, and how such a lofty ideal might be achieved, remain (Christensen and Lægreid, 2011). For example, is it about direct account-giving to the public, or is it about account-giving to those representatives, individuals, or organizations that ‘stand in the gap’ between the account-giver and the public? Alternatively, is it about creating an appropriate balance of both? Moreover, who decides what is ‘appropriate’? Contrastingly, some discussions of public accountability particularly highlight elected representatives, public entities, courts/tribunals, civil-society groups, and the media as having prominent roles (C&AG NZ, 2016), while others emphasize citizens and service users/beneficiaries as more central (Onyx, 2008; Open Government Partnership, 2019).

Stewart (1984) refers to a ladder of public accountability, distinguishing between accountability for probity and legality, process accountability, performance accountability, program accountability, and policy accountability. The specific accountability focus, and the desire and capacity to hold an accountee (e.g., an organization or an individual) to account, is likely to vary among accountor groups. For example, citizens (and possibly resource-provider organizations) may be particularly interested in service delivery/performance (e.g., output or impact), while the concern of regulators may be more on legality and probity (Hyndman and Eden, 2001). Such ideas have been explored in a variety of accountability settings in the public sector, often from a range of very different perspectives (Rixon, 2010; McCrae et al., 2018). Given the above, it is perhaps unsurprising that a number of researchers (Mechkova et al., 2019; Zumofen, 2022), in exploring the concept of public accountability, view it as overlapping, multilayered, multidimensional and, as a consequence, polysemantic. This reflection mirrors Agyemang's (2024) recent conclusion when, on the basis of revisiting the meaning of accountability as it related to her work in a range of public-service contexts over time and particularly drawing on Rached's (2016) ‘coordinates of accountability’ theoretical framework, she describes accountability as a ‘murky concept that is difficult to define’ (Agyemang, 2024, p. 2). Nevertheless, despite this inability of the rather abstract concept to be reified into something more concrete and uncontestable, its virtues are constantly praised and its effects recommended (Zumofen, 2022).

ACCOUNTABILITY, TRANSPARENCY, CONTROL, AND CRISIS

A factor that influences the intricacies and nuances of the concept of accountability relates to its linkages with other key-related ideas, with, at times, these associated terms used synonymously for ‘accountability’. Referencing Deleuze and Guatarri's (1988) concept of assemblage,1 it can be argued that concepts such as accountability, transparency, and control can be related in a non-hierarchical way in which each depends on the other. Deleuze and Guattari (1988) describe this form of relationship using the analogy of a rhizome in which every node is related to each other, but none is rooted in a preceding notion. This idea of a rhizomatic relationship has been used before in the public administration and accounting literature to relate concepts, such as legitimacy, transparency, trust, and accountability. For example, a New Zealand Government publication exploring the meaning of, and ways to ensure, good public accountability, states that the ‘principles and concepts important to public sector accountability include transparency, fairness, integrity, and trust’ (C&AG NZ, 2016, p. 9). Similar themes and comparable arguments have been marshalled in more academic pronouncements when reflecting on accounting and accountability processes in both the third sector (Hyndman et al., 2021) and central government (Ferry and Midgley, 2024). As we shall see as we discuss these concepts in relation to crises, each of them, at least to some extent, depends on the others. Consequently, as the following discussion will show, they are related in a rhizomatic fashion.

As discussed previously, accountability is a complex, multilayered concept, labelled by Sinclair (1995) as a ‘chameleon’ notion having many differing points of emphasis. It is often described either as a mechanism, by which one actor holds another actor to account, or as a virtue by which individual civil servants, officers of the state, or executives of PSOs are held to account (Bovens, 2010). In emergencies, the relationships upon which accountability depends, and the virtue that public officers and others responsible for public-service delivery are therefore required to demonstrate, changes. These adjustments can be thought of in different ways. The crisis itself may even require the government to take emergency action to protect the safety of the public. This argument has its roots in the Ciceronian maxim that the safety of the people is the supreme law (Poole, 2015). Similar reflections regarding appropriate actions of third-sector leaders to protect service-user needs in response to crises would seem valid, especially where such service users lack significant power for combatting the crisis themselves. Moreover, crises can, and often do, result in the need for appreciably different forms of service delivery being devised in order to meet users’ needs and continue the mission focus of the organization (McKee, 2015; Kober and Thambar, 2022). Similarly, in the public sector, the emergence of a crisis has been seen as a trigger that provides justification for the suspension of normal rules (e.g., around procurement), as was the case during the COVID-19 pandemic (Sian and Smyth, 2022). In addition, it has been argued that crises can change accountability relationships: for example, the state may demand that citizens are accountable to it rather than the other way around (Ahn and Wickramasinghe, 2021). What accountability means during a crisis depends upon both the way the crisis is governed and the data that are available to external stakeholders (including citizens) about the PSO. New demands upon external stakeholders are likely to trigger new demands for accountability if key values, such as democratic liberty, fairness, and justice, are to be protected within a society (Ferry et al., 2024). During a crisis, actors such as local-government bodies (or local-government officers) may also use accountability processes and protocols to help govern their area of responsibility, both by dispersing accountability for decisions that have to be made to grassroots organizations, and by binding together the area through a rhetoric of accountability against a higher authority. Ahrens and Ferry (2015) highlight an example of the latter strategy of attempted accountability/responsibility shifting as they analyse the actions of local government in projecting accountability demands onto central government when encountering a crisis. Furthermore, mechanisms of accountability often require information as their ‘raw material’ to enable citizens, parliamentarians, and other stakeholders to hold those in power to account (Hood, 2014). The extent of accountability and its effectiveness thus ultimately depends upon the demands that PSOs place on external stakeholders, and the utility of the information a PSO publishes about itself.

Transparency can be defined in terms of disclosure to others (often including the public) in a way that is intelligible to the recipient, although the ways in which transparency is enacted may be many and varied. Notwithstanding this, Heald (2006) outlines different directions that transparency can come from. This may be upwards from a senior official, downwards so that the subject can observe the activity of the ruler, outwards so that those within an organization get a clearer sense of the world outside the organizational boundary, or inwards so that the organization is visible to the outside world. The manner through which transparency occurs, like accountability, will frequently be impacted upon by a crisis. New metrics can become important because of the emergence of a crisis, for example, the measures of ‘deaths’ being used during the COVID-19 pandemic to determine the performance of different states in addressing the emergency (Mitchell et al., 2021). There are risks in these new forms of transparency as they threaten to eliminate qualitative measures of a response in favour of purely quantitative measures (Hyndman and McKillop, 2019). For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, performance measurement through ‘death’ numbers reduced the impact of the losses that had been suffered by lessening the emotional power of the event and its consequences (Yu, 2021). Governments may see transparency as a sufficient form of accountability (Ferry et al., 2015). However, the value of transparency is limited by the capacity of its audience to use the data that the transparent process reveals (Etzioni, 2014; Ferry and Eckersley, 2015), with O'Neill (2006) arguing, in relation to the disclosure of information as a strategy to increase transparency, that it will achieve little ‘unless the material disseminated is made accessible to and assessable by relevant audiences, and actually reaches those audiences’ (p. 84). The form of transparency chosen needs to be guided by the purpose of the transparency: transparency in this sense is instrumental (Heald, 2006). When transparency is directed to the ends of accountability, it becomes part of a matching pair with accountability, rather than an awkward couple (Ferry et al., 2015). Transparency is also reshaped by the nature of what PSOs do: as the role of PSOs extend to the management of the population (or a part thereof) during a crisis, the requirements of transparency about that management also change (Ferry et al., 2024).

New challenges to values like transparency and accountability arise during a crisis because the nature of management itself changes. PSOs attempt to control the influence of the crisis by using data to understand what is happening in the crisis and generate effective responses (Walker, 2014; Haynes, 2020; Hyndman, 2020). Amongst the information that PSOs use is accounting information (Charity Finance Group, 2012; Bracci et al., 2015; Sargiacomo et al., 2021). Accounting classifications allow governments to control and understand the crisis at a distance (Sargiacomo, 2015; Ahrens and Ferry, 2021; Cordery and Yates, 2024). It is argued that accounting itself may need to innovate so that society can recognize long-term crises as they happen, rather than ignoring them because it lacks the vocabulary to understand them (Tregidga and Laine, 2021). However, the increased control and knowledge required during a crisis is not always a positive attribute. Scholars have argued that increased control could have sinister implications in which PSOs (particularly governments) marshal the language of crisis, exaggerate the magnitude of particular events, and exploit the increased potential for control in society to manufacture ‘eternal emergencies’ in which control can more easily be justified (Hind, 2017; Antonelli et al., 2022). It has also been suggested that for a crisis response to be effective, it needs to be seen as legitimate, often because governments in particular, and PSOs in general, may have a tendency to wish to control and direct, not just their own operations, but also those of the wider population (Ferry et al., 2021; Lenz, 2024).

POLYCRISES AND FINANCIAL RESILIENCE

Since the Great Recession of 2007/2008 (Hodges and Lapsley, 2016), there has been a maelstrom of crises that, together, have been termed ‘polycrises’. These have gripped the international community and led to both attacks on democracy itself in the West, as well as the tightening of autocratic controls in less liberal jurisdictions. Overall, this has increased the general perception (and perhaps reality) of the precarity of life. In shorthand, and specifically in the context of the UK and Europe, this crisis environment is lately evidenced by a pungent mix of concerns, such as austerity, Brexit, climate change, disease (COVID-19) and the ethics of war. Most of these have a wider international bearing than merely the UK and Europe, and each has a tendency to generate and exacerbate other crises, for example, the widespread and ongoing cost-of-living and migrant crises. The highlighting of this unstable powder keg of issues, which PSOs are required to engage with, particularly comes to the fore at election times, and has a tendency to polarize political thought and rhetoric, and encourage the articulation of quite radical (and often unproven and risky) policy offerings (Karabag, 2020; Lipscy, 2020; Jones et al., 2021; Clarke, 2022).

In many definitions of the term ‘crisis’, notions relating to periods of intense danger or difficulty appear, or connections to the making of difficult and critical decisions are highlighted. In addition, distinctions are made between ‘creeping crises’, ‘slow-burning crises’, and ‘sudden crises’ (Seabrooke and Tsingou, 2019; Hyndman et al., 2024). However, the actuality of individual crises is extremely varied, with assorted origins, impacts, and implications, and eliciting very different strategies as responses. At the very least, they require a malleable financial and service resilience from PSOs through different accounting, auditing, and accountability practices to mitigate impacts and implications (Ahrens and Ferry, 2020, 2021; Plaisance, 2022; Kober and Thambar, 2022). In this context, resilience is often viewed in terms of an organization's ability to withstand or recover rapidly from a crisis (Hyndman et al., 2024). Internationally, in the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2007/2008 and the consequent period of austerity, many central governments adopted austerity policies to balance budgets through aggressive expenditure cuts. In numerous countries, austerity became an annualized event of consistent reductions of national funding for public services, not only across all levels of government, but in relation to the funding of third-sector organizations that deliver critical public services (Charity Finance Group, 2012), making it progressively harder for PSOs to balance their budgets. The financial sustainability and even solvency of such organizations therefore emerged as a serious issue, with inequality and inequities becoming normalized (Fishwick and Connolly, 2018).

In the age of austerity, resilience of PSOs became a subject of growing academic research, particularly with respect to public-sector bodies. This is because government was often regarded as central to recovery as businesses failed and the government became the bulwark. On this basis, Barbera et al. (2017, 2019), through their financial resilience framework, employ a combination of perceived vulnerability, anticipatory capacities, and coping capacities to enable the identification of patterns of resilience in a mix of public-sector jurisdictional settings (Germany, Italy, and the UK). This illustrates that governments (in this case, local governments) react differently to constraints and stimuli due to variations in their histories of resourcing and financial management. In addition, Barbera et al. (2017, 2019) contend that organizations that are more financially vulnerable are more likely to constrict and focus on ‘bouncing back’ (related to their proficiency to react to a crisis and move to restore the initial status quo), whereas the presence of anticipatory capacities was more indicative of an organization's ability to ‘bounce forward’ (related to its aptitude to establish a new, and better, post-crisis configuration). Research in other PSOs, while not explicitly using Barbera et al.'s (2017, 2019) notions of ‘bouncing back’ and ‘bouncing forward’, resonates with similar ideas. For example, with respect to UK charitable organizations2 and their responses to the COVID-19 crisis, Hyndman (2020) finds both short-term, immediate actions to reduce expenditures and increase revenues as a basis for protecting the financial standing of charities (aligned with ideas of bouncing back), in addition to a more reflective and long-term energy to develop new forms of service delivery in response to the crisis, some of which, post-crisis, were maintained (associated with ideas of bouncing forward). Other third-sector research examines the reserves policies of Australian-based organizations and their ability to respond appropriately to crises (Cortis and Lee, 2019). This was conducted using a large charity national data base (records from 4,542 charities were extracted and analysed) not long after the impact of the 2007/2008 Great Recession, when programs of austerity were widespread and many individual charity donors were facing financial challenges, but before the emergence of the COVID-19 crisis in December 2019. Here, younger charities, larger charities, and those highly reliant on government funding were less likely to hold adequate reserves, and the researchers argue that this indicated poor short-term financial capacity. This would, at the very least, undermine their ability to ‘bounce back’ and, in the most extreme cases, would be indicative of possible survival issues. Later research, which applies paradox theory in an Australian setting, reflects on the reactions by a charity to COVID-19 challenges (Kober and Thambar, 2022). Using a case-based approach, adjustments to the management control system (MCS) were examined and analysed as a response to crisis. Echoing similar sentiments to those presented by Hyndman (2020), the researchers highlight how the MCS of a charity facing crisis could be modified, to manage simultaneously longer-term/strategic objectives and short-term/operational challenges, in order to navigate the emergency.

During austerity, the financial resilience of PSOs became a serious concern, further exacerbated by other crises from a range of other evolving uncertainties, such as those arising from concerns over climate change, fear of COVID-19, and, particularly in the UK and Europe, Brexit. Such shocks almost became routine, often requiring different, and frequently bespoke, evaluation and accounting considerations (Fishwick and Connolly, 2018; Ahrens and Ferry, 2020, 2021). On a global basis, COVID-19 in particular challenged the financial resilience of central, and, possibly even more impactfully, local government, which arguably had more limited capacity and capability than central government to absorb and adapt. This also flowed through to affect an extensive range of public- sector bodies and, more widely, a variety of PSOs.

With respect to local government, whereas previous financial resilience research had focused on austerity illustrating gradual adaptive processes and evolving financial management capabilities (Papenfuß et al., 2017; Steccolini et al., 2017; Barbera et al., 2020), Ahrens and Ferry (2020) highlight how a sudden and urgent nationwide crisis, such as COVID-19, put different strains on government and required an alternative response than that embraced when facing the ‘slow burn’ of austerity. They argue that COVID-19 needed, at the very least, an interim measure from central government that provided an ability to acquire or generate high-funding support, in order to both protect the immediate social response, and subsequently enable local government sufficient ability to strengthen economic growth at the local level. Whilst Ahrens and Ferry (2020) acknowledge that the sudden nature of COVID-19 demanded emergency budget allocations, they likewise stress that it is critical that formalized spending reviews be undertaken to establish and reinforce political priorities in the wake of crisis, and for clearly matching policies and funding flows to be agreed. They argue that this would afford a framework for annual budgets to be created that were aligned with audit and accountability arrangements that stressed value for money and equity, rather than merely cost, with appropriate risk-management protocols supporting this process. In addition, Ahrens and Ferry (2020) lament the difficulties in managing the COVID-19 crisis where key statistics were unavailable and capacity to analyse data was limited, in part due to earlier austerity-related budget cuts.

Hyndman (2020) explores the influence of charities and the impact of COVID-19 in the UK. In reviewing the actions of charities in response to the pandemic and examining the pertinence of possible strategies to manage in the face of it, he highlights a sector where major swathes of income were lost, demands on services increased, and numerous charities were unable to operate at all (or, at least, not operate in the normal manner) because of a range of imposed constraints. On the basis of a review of extant evidence, and consideration of the particular unique features of the sector in terms of mission and institutionalized ways of operating, attention was directed to three key areas: fundraising approaches (in terms of effectiveness, as well as the ethical appropriateness, of particular strategies); the development and use of performance-management frameworks; and the importance (and challenges) of generating suitable beneficiary engagement when COVID-related decisions had to be made. Other charity sector-specific research focuses on the reserves policies of charities before and during the pandemic, and highlights lessons that might have been learnt. Here, it is highlighted that the COVID-19 shock was a significantly more substantial and pervasive financial shock than had been experienced for some time in the sector. Using large-scale data from official regulator databases in the UK and Australia, researchers (Cortis and Lee, 2019; Clifford and Mohan, 2020), whilst recognizing variations between different types of charities, argue that if charities had to rely solely upon their own reserves, few would be able to do so for any length of time. On the basis of their analysis, they highlight the need for many charities to strengthen their financial capability by concentrating attention on reserves policy.

The cost-of-living crisis (with a general and widespread fall in ‘real’ disposable incomes) that resulted from high inflation, in part due to energy prices rising as a consequence of the Russia/Ukraine war, created another dimension of the overall polycrisis and the need to establish and maintain financial resilience. It has been argued that government practice has not reflected research calls for financial and service resilience, nor encouraged the development of anticipatory capacities in PSOs. In many ways, this is perhaps not a great surprise. According to international finance expert Allen Schick: ‘To my knowledge, no country has ever set aside sufficient fiscal reserves to finance major wars, economic depressions or biological pandemics … In fact, few countries have sufficient reserves to cover shortfalls owing to cyclical recessions’ (referenced in Marrs, 2020). As a result, while strong and well-prepared countries may maintain fiscal balance through economic growth, be able to meet future costs of key obligations, and maintain adequate governance, it is likely that many countries will not. This further increases the danger of pervasive systemic risk.

KEY THEMES IN THE SPECIAL ISSUE

Consistent with the review provided above, a number of different crises, and different aspects of a crisis scenario, were also identified by the papers in this special issue. While it is clear that crises can encompass any sector and area of activity of PSOs, from higher education to health care and the wider public-service realm, taken together, the papers stress the complexity of defining such events and identifying appropriate responses to them. The shadow of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, as an example of disruptive and unexpected crisis, moreover, is still clearly visible in much of the research. The contributions in the special issue, therefore, move along two parallel lines: one discussing crisis (and reactions to it) in the face of the COVID-19 emergency (the contributions from Caramia et al., 2024; Columbano et al., 2024; Dos Santos and Lopez, 2024; Van Helden et al., 2024; Polzer and Öner-Kula, 2024; and Stafford, 2024), and one investigating broader and wider forms of upheaval, such as corruption, scandals, and sustainable reputation (this consisting of the papers by Abdelbadie et al., 2024; Tucker and Alewine, 2024; and De Widt et al., 2024).

With reference to the crisis that ensued from the COVID-19 pandemic in health-care services all over the world, Stafford (2024) adopts a counter-accounting approach (Chiapello, 2017; Laine and Vinnari, 2020) to challenge the hegemonic narrative dominant in UK public discourse at the time. The counter-account narrative, based on the analysis of official financial documents and reports from 2010 to 2022, shows that the crisis was the result of deliberate government policy choices around continued underfunding and use of the private sector to deliver health-care infrastructure and services. This can, therefore, be linked to wider concerns around public accountability in the context of neoliberalism and financialization. Through the adoption of a counter-accounting framework, the study highlights the need for broader forms of public accountability, beyond the narrow, technical mechanisms that have become prevalent after the pandemic.

Again with reference to the COVID-19 crisis, but looking at the wider public sector, Dos Santos and Lopez (2024) investigate the role of social media as a forum for democratic accountability during Brazil's first wave of the pandemic. Drawing on ideas from agnostic democracy (Mouffe, 2000) and dialogic accountability (Brown, 2009; Dillard and Vinnari, 2019), the authors analyse three social-isolation mandates (from March to July 2020) in São Paulo, coding 970 comments from the São Paulo Government's official Facebook page. In the analysed case, users participated in the virtual space to create dissent, dialogically communicate with users sharing similar views, and generate opportunities to construct a collective view of the matter. This was the case despite the lack of information on the municipality's Facebook page itself. The study contributes to furthering critical dialogic accounting and accountability research by theorizing agonistic democratic accountability based on robust empirical evidence.

Columbano et al. (2024) examine how government can make itself accountable to citizens during a crisis. In particular, looking at the Italian response to the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic (January to March 2020), the authors explore how the crisis generated the need to decide the values to be prioritized by government policies and how such priorities were justified to citizens. Based on 52 pieces of audio-visual material (e.g., press conferences) released by the Italian Government, as well as press releases and transcripts of public speeches, Goffman's (1956) framing theory is utilized to analyse government ‘performances’. Such performances revealed the Government's own view of the hierarchy of values used to justify their response to the crisis. These views changed as the crisis unfolded to include changing definitions and values. The research contributes to critical accountability studies by examining the normative dimension of rituals of account-giving (Everett and Friesen, 2010; Sargiacomo, 2015). It postulates the existence of different configurations of accountability, namely: paternalistic (when government presents itself as in control of a manageable crisis, where public health is a superior value); political (when the crisis is described as being under control, with a balance between values such as public health and freedom); and communal accountability (when government openly describes COVID-19 as an emergency and public health is showcased as the key priority).

Again looking at the Italian context, Caramia et al. (2024) use the theoretical framework of sense-making (Weick et al., 1995) to explore how local-government auditors responded to the uncertainty and instability introduced by COVID-19. The study draws on a qualitative survey administered to 135 auditors of Italian municipalities. While auditing processes typically follow formalized and rigid procedures, the findings show that to re-establish the rationality the crisis challenged, auditors increased collaboration with municipalities. Moreover, in the post-crisis period, the willingness to guarantee their independence led them to re-enact retrospectively similar ideas of collaboration. The paper contributes to the literature on auditing by shedding light on how auditors make sense of their role and the activities performed during the main phases of a crisis.

Van Helden et al. (2024) compare four countries with different governmental structures (Belgium and Germany as opposed to the Netherlands and Portugal) and, taking a financial resilience perspective, they investigate governments’ coping and anticipatory responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of business support and impacts on fiscal matters and employment. Drawing on the definition of resilience as organizational ability to react to crises by both ‘bouncing back’ and ‘bouncing forward’ (Barbera et al., 2020), they adopt a qualitative approach to analyse government documents, reports, official statistics, and interviews with key actors. The findings suggest that bouncing-forward responses (e.g., setting up new post-shock configurations) were largely absent because of the limited time governments had for critical reflection. The impacts of business support on the number of bankruptcies and employment figures, nevertheless, turned out to be positive. Unemployment and fiscal impacts diverged among the four countries, and it is suggested that governmental structure was here influential: unitary states performed better than federal states. The paper also reflects on the lessons learned from COVID-19 for support in future crises and contributes to the development of a framework for understanding crisis-related business support from a financial-resilience perspective.

Finally, Polzer and Öner-Kula (2024) point out a gap in existing research around the relationship between accountability and social forums, especially in the context of collaborative public-governance initiatives and digital governance during crisis. Based on the digital accountability literature, the authors set out to investigate the role played by debates and judgement in such a context, focusing on a collaborative-governance initiative relative to the Austrian contact-tracing app launched during the COVID-19 pandemic. Carrying out a passive netnography (Jeacle, 2021), including 1,084 tweets published on X, the case study shows that digital technology not only impacted the ways citizens engaged in the accountability debate, it also voiced themes of accountability. In particular, the digital character of public innovations influenced on which terms the forum held actors responsible and accountable. Moreover, the debate in the forum extended beyond the contact-tracing app as the core issue. The study represents a first attempt to investigate the crucial role of debates for collaborative governance in the digital age and sheds light on the temporal dynamics of accountability during a crisis response.

Turning towards broader types of crisis, Tucker and Alewine (2024) analyse, from a management control perspective, the management of crises that arose from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Apollo (1961–1972) and Space Shuttle (1972–2011) programs. Using the setting of this very original PSO, they seek to understand better the ways in which management control practices contribute to organizational resilience in response to crises. Relying on archival/historical qualitative research, the findings show the central role played by management control in contributing to and supporting organizational resilience at NASA in relation to the Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia crises. This was reflected in NASA's ability to bounce forward from the crises through extensive investigation of the causes and development and implementation of management control responses to ensure such failures did not recur. Organizational learning achieved through the interactive use of management control practices was instrumental in fostering both change and adaptation. The study addresses a gap in the literature by exploring the propensity of management control to build and support resilience. It answers calls to explore how organizational practices evolve over time in crisis situations and how organizations learn from unexpected events (Duchek, 2020).

Abdelbadie et al. (2024) investigate the influence of social-interaction dynamics in creating reputation in another type of PSO, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), during the public funding cuts that affected the UK in 2014/2015. In the UK context, in particular, the vast majority of HEI are PSOs, also recognized as charities. Adopting an institutional logics and sense-making framework (Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005; Thornton et al., 2012) and multiple regression analysis to test their hypotheses, the authors suggest that decision-making concerning sustainable development (SD) should amalgamate intellectual activism with educational approaches, thus leading to an enhanced reputation. An extensive and profound sense-making process by HEIs has a significantly positive influence on the scrutiny, interpretation, and evaluation of UK HEIs’ sustainable actions. This, in turn, amplifies the reputation of HEIs beyond the impact of any alternative social mechanisms. One of the main contributions of the paper is to provide a theoretical foundation and first empirical evidence on the relationship between HEIs’ responsiveness to SD and critical organizational outcomes.

Finally, De Widt et al. (2024) investigate how boards of directors and auditors retrospectively reflect on and justify their role in the breakdown of governance systems. The paper focuses on the crisis following the corruption scandal that involved South African Airways (SAA), a state-owned enterprise (SOE) and PSO. SOEs represent one-fifth of the world's largest enterprises and play a key role in implementing public policy and addressing economic problems arising from natural monopolies (Baum et al., 2019). The research is based on a documentary case study of the near collapse of SAA and examines how individuals key to upholding the airline's accountability mechanisms rationalized and justified their actions during the crisis period. The neutralization techniques framework (Harris, 2022) is adopted as theoretical underpinning, which has been, so far, little utilized in the accounting field. The research identifies a number of neutralization techniques that were used by the actors involved to cast doubt on the responsibility for wrongdoing and garner sympathy where this was not possible. The study offers a new perspective on SOEs in a country so far little investigated.

DEVELOPMENT OF A RESEARCH AGENDA

While recognizing the contestability, and necessarily partial nature, of any agenda for further research, on the basis of previous considerations and the contributions contained in this special issue, this paper offers several suggestions of potential areas for further crisis-related research on accountability, governance, and management in PSOs. This is to encourage the generation of more, and very valuable, understanding in the area as a support for greater evidence-based discussions of how PSOs may improve resilience to (and management of) a range of crises. It is anticipated that such will be of use to policy-makers (including government), regulators, managers, and a range of other stakeholders to improve the management of, and accountability for, PSOs.

CONCLUDING COMMENTS

This paper aimed to provide not only an overview of the papers and themes in this special issue, but a critical reflection on what crisis means, how frequently we can identify one, and how this affects our notions of accountability (and possibly transparency) in the delivery of public services. As we acknowledge the complexity of such constructs, and the challenges of carrying out research pertaining to crisis, researchers have a moral obligation to address such wicked issues. Such research can highlight issues arising from crisis in a timely manner and, in the aftermath of crisis, reflect on lessons learned, attempt explanations of reactions to it, and steer policy decisions. More structured, theory-based and methodologically-robust research, in this sense, is particularly needed.

Based on the literature and the papers in this special issue, a number of further research ideas are identified and proposed. It is hoped that this research agenda will contribute by providing a stepping stone to strengthen our knowledge of how we manage and deliver public services in the face of crisis, and what effects crisis produces both within and outside different types of organization. PSOs, in particular, represent an example of providers of essential services that constellate our everyday lives. Even in periods devoid of crisis, it is difficult to reflect on life without them; in crisis situations, they often become even more crucial. Therefore, the study of public-service management and governance during and after crises represents a source of invaluable empirical evidence and theoretical inspiration for researchers interested in PSOs and anyone keen to understand society better. This is, however, not only a matter of contributing to a better academic understanding of the world. What links public services (however provided), crisis, accountability, and transparency is the necessary recognition of the importance of these aspects for the concrete functioning of our nations. This is an area like few others, where theory and practice come together and the policy implications of our research can become clearly evident. Therefore, a more reflective and constructive approach to how we can make such research heard is essential, so that we not only speak of policy implications, but actual impact on policy and practice. Given the importance of such research, this would seem a particularly natural and desirable outcome.

This special issue raises a number of thought-provoking issues and provides a firm encouragement to researchers to get involved in the study of crises in relation to public-service delivery, however complex that may be. This has the potential to facilitate their voices being heard at the political level, so that lessons are learnt that, at best, will reduce the likelihood of mistakes being made, and, at least, will lessen the likelihood of past errors being repeated. As we wade through old and outstanding crises, awaiting new challenges that will surely be faced in the future, it will be interesting to see how this body of research progresses, and whether and how the role and meaning of public services, and of the different organizations and sectors providing them, transform.