Public Service Accounting And Accountability Group (PSAAG) Biennial Workshop 2025 & Early Career Colloquium

We are pleased to invite you to PSAAG Workshop 2025, which will focus on the theme "Accounting for What Matters: Rethinking Public Sector Accounting and Accountability for Social Sustainability and Equity".

Public sector organisations face complex challenges, such as economic instability, austerity, misinformation, climate emergencies, and systemic inequities. These challenges expose tensions between maintaining fiscal stability and the equitable provision of public services. Dominant paradigms such as New Public Management and ongoing austerity have led public sector organisations to prioritise efficiency over social equity – leading to accounting practices that often reinforce marginalisation rather than challenging it.

Social equity is essential to ensuring social sustainability, yet deeply connected to how accounting and accountability mechanisms are designed. These instruments are far from neutral; they carry values, priorities, and power structures that shape who benefits and who is left-behind. Research evidence that short-term financial strategies, such as budgetary cutbacks, often undermine long-term financial sustainability as well as social outcomes, thus perpetuating systemic inequities.

To realign public sector accounting an accountability with social sustainability two challenges must be addressed. First, operationalising social sustainability itself, which demands considering pluralistic values – including participation, collaboration, social equity and justice. This requires both robust flexible accountability mechanisms which are context specific. Second, developing organisational capabilities that ensure social sustainability persists despite disruptions (e.g., economic crises, political realignments).

The PSAAG workshop seeks to critically re-examine conventional assumptions by bringing together researchers and practitioners. We aim to provoke discussion around fundamental questions, about embedding equity and inclusion into accounting and accountability frameworks, trade-offs between financial stability and social equity, and building capacities to establish a financially resilient and socially just system.

We also hope the workshop discussions will inspire ideas and collaborations for the forthcoming Financial Accountability & Management (FAM) special issue on this theme. 

Joint papers between academics and practitioners are encouraged, as we aim to foster stronger bridges between research and practice in this field. You can find more information on Wiley.

To participate, please register on the button below or the registration link in the end of the page.