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The purpose of this paper is to ask how forms of “performative” interventions can prompt processes of re-thinking, which can, in turn, instigate the critical production of public space. Most importantly, it also asks how this methodology can manifest within various cultural and political contexts. Today, public spaces tend to be controlled either by the state or by private corporations. Neoliberal policies promote commercial interests, which subsequently drives inequality and determines what can and cannot be accessed by the public. The public spaces that are currently present in the neoliberal cities are, in fact, “pseudo” public spaces.

In an attempt to form new understandings of this problem, the authors’ approach is rooted in feminist theories of performativity, which focus on how identities are persistently re-produced through performance. These theories consider how the “self” is always entangled within everyday life interactions and how it is shaped by both societal and bodily practices. Framing spaces as shapable, informed by the embodied dialectic relations between spaces and social relations, the study uses forms of performative methodology to create productive disruptions and “constructed situations” (Debord, 2012). This methodology consists of intervention within these spaces in order to produce alternative public space and forms of publicness. Based on research conducted at the Sheffield School of Architecture, as well as a four-day invited workshop at the Floating University Berlin, this study investigates applications of performative practice methodology in the cities of Amman and Berlin.

The paper will begin by exploring how the two cities are regulated through various political and planning policies that affect public spaces. This line of enquiry will also involve questioning physical, social and political access to public space in these contexts and analysing the various actants, performative actions and processes that were involved in producing performative interventions.

The paper will conclude by discussing the potential and limitations of applying and translating such approaches in public spaces within different cultural and political contexts. As such, the study proposes a new methodological framework for re-thinking and provoking the critical production of public space through forms of performative spatial practice.

Historically, public and private sector enterprises have been viewed as existing on opposing ends of the performance measurement spectrum, due to seemingly incompatible worldviews. Private sector enterprises are traditionally viewed as profit-driven and focused on a return on investment paradigm, while public sector enterprises are seen as mission-oriented and answerable to a paradigm less focused on investment and more on improving enterprise capability. The authors propose that, in fact, these worldviews are not mutually exclusive, as private and public sector enterprises must both account for investment and mission concerns. In order to leverage real synergy to be gained from distinct but complementary viewpoints, a systemic approach to evaluating organization performance through the novel fusion of operational test and evaluation and multi-criteria decision analysis is developed. Use of this framework is demonstrated within an enterprise that involves consideration of public and private sector concerns. The authors hope that the approach proposed in this chapter will enable public and private sector enterprises to comprehensively address performance.

This paper aims to generate new research directions at the intersection of accounting, whistleblowing and publicness: defined as the attainment of public goals, interests and values.

A problematising review is used to challenge and rethink the existing accounting and whistleblowing literature by incorporating readings from the public interest and public value literature. The paper draws on the work of Dewey (1927), Bozeman (2007) and Benington (2009) to open up new ways of theorising relations between accounting, whistleblowing and publicness.

Firstly, the paper develops a public interest theoretical framework which shows whistleblowing is a public value activity that moves organisational wrongdoing into the public sphere where it is subject to democratic debate and dialogue required to reconcile the public's interests with what the public values. Secondly, this framework provides one answer to continuing questions in the literature of how to define accountings relationship to the public interest. Finally, the paper suggests this conceptual framework be used to stimulate debate on whether and how one should expand existing accounting and accountability knowledge boundaries to incorporate the broader social, political and moral concerns highlighted by whistleblowers acting in the public interest.

Accounting and whistleblowing research has ignored the theoretical implications of whistleblowing in the public interest. The paper shows how accounting and accountability can respond to the challenges of a shifting and intangible public interest by providing a conceptual framework to guide current and future theoretical questions of how accounting is connected to the public interest.

Argues that conceptually, privatization entails changing organizational status from public to private and from a monopoly to a competitive situation. In practice, the outcome may be different. Many privatized utilities conform to neither the traditional notion of the public nor the private enterprise. The broad dichotomy of the public‐private model of enterprise classification no longer provides an adequate insight to the workings of organizations in today’s environment. The new challenges emanating from the increasingly complex nature of modern environment require a new philosophy of organizational classification ‐ a reconceptualization of conventional paradigms. Based on the UK’s privatization experience, offers a framework for identifying and delineating the boundaries of an emergent organizational type ‐ the national enterprise. It is suggested that a clear articulation of the national enterprise concept might be useful to governmental strategists in planning the process of transforming state‐owned enterprises.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect various pathways for public sector accounting and accountability research in a post-new public management (NPM) context.

The paper first discusses the relationship between NPM and public sector accounting research. It then explores the possible stimuli that inter-disciplinary accounting scholars may derive from recent public administration studies, public policy and societal trends, highlighting possible ways to extend public sector accounting research and strengthen dialogue with other disciplines.

NPM may have represented a golden age, but also a “golden cage,” for the development of public sector accounting research. The paper reflects possible ways out of this golden cage, discussing future avenues for public sector accounting research. In doing so, it highlights the opportunities offered by re-considering the “public” side of accounting research and shifting the attention from the public sector, seen as a context for public sector accounting research, to publicness, as a concept central to such research.

The paper calls for stronger engagement with contemporary developments in public administration and policy. This could be achieved by looking at how public sector accounting accounts for, but also impacts on, issues of wider societal relevance, such as co-production and hybridization of public services, austerity, crises and wicked problems, the creation and maintenance of public value and democratic participation.

The authors aim to contribute to conceptual and empirical understanding of publicness in public sector accounting research by analysing how accounting technologies facilitated the transformation of public values of the UK tax authority.

The authors develop a conceptual framework for analysing public values in terms of relational power. Combining governmentality and actor–network theory, the authors focus on the complex relationships through which human and non-human actors interact and the public values that emerge from these evolving socio-material networks. Based on a critical-interpretivist ethnographic study of interviews, documents and secondary survey data, the authors identify the emergent properties of accounting technologies in their case study.

The authors explain how accounting technologies facilitated the transformation of public values in the tax authority by reshaping relational power. Traditional public values were eroded and replaced by neoliberal values through a gradual change process (“frog in the pan”) of (1) disconnecting workers and citizens both spatially and socially; (2) losing touch with the embodied nature of tax administration; and (3) yielding to a dehumanising performance management system. Neoliberal accounting technologies transformed the texture of relationships in such a way that workers and citizens became disempowered from effective, accountable and humane tax administration.

Further research is needed that gains wider access to tax authority workers, extends the scope of the empirical data and provides comparisons with other tax authorities and public sector organisations.

The authors show that a relational approach to public values enables identification of what is “valuable” and how public sector organisations can become “value-able”.

The authors offer an interdisciplinary conceptualisation of publicness based on public administration literature, develop a relational conceptualisation of public values and provide original empirical evidence about the changing publicness of the UK tax authority.

Ours is a complex world. On these five words will be built a foundation for an alternative way of framing our thinking about risk management. Complexity means many things, but a key feature is that outcomes cannot be predicted with certainty. In the best cases, opportunities arise to analyse and develop some understanding of the uncertainty within a complex system, and in the most fortunate of such circumstances it is possible to anticipate specific outcomes with some degree of accuracy. The authors call such circumstances risks – that is, measurable uncertainties. Complexity, however, consists mainly of interconnected uncertainties and unknown/unknowable possible outcomes or effects. And, of course, complex systems can include humans whose (in)ability to perceive and interpret such environments makes things – well – more complex.

This book ultimately will focus on how the authors construct a way to lead and manage in this environment, but first it is critical that the terminology and description of this world be given some precision. Therefore, Chapter One begins with an introduction to the idea of complexity, including some mention of the principles and concepts that inform our understanding of it. In turn, this discussion introduces uncertainty. Risk, as a category of uncertainty is discussed and the implications of its measurability are presented, which leads to a discussion of human perception and behaviour under conditions of uncertainty. Attention is then drawn to the unknown and the unknowable, and to emergent phenomena. Since the focus of this book is on public sector risk management, the chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the idea of public risk.

The purpose of this polyphonic paper is to report on interdisciplinary discussions on the state-of-the-art and future of public sector accounting research (PSAR). The authors hope to enliven the debates of the past and future developments in terms of context, themes, theories, methods and impacts in the field of PSAR by the exchanges they include here.

This polyphonic paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach. It brings into conversation ideas, views and approaches of several scholars on the actual and future developments of PSAR in various contexts, and explores potential implications.

This paper has brought together scholars from a plurality of disciplines, research methods and geographical areas, showing at the same time several points of convergence on important future themes (such as accounting as a mean for public, accounting, hybridity and value pluralism) and enabling conditions (accounting capabilities, profession and digitalisation) for PSA scholarship and practice, and the richness of looking at them from a plurality of perspectives.

Exploring these past and future developments opens up the potential for interesting theoretical insights. A much greater theoretical and practical reconsideration of PSAR will be fostered by the exchanges included here.

In setting out a future research agenda, this paper fosters theoretical and methodological pluralism in the interdisciplinary research community interested in PSAR in various contexts. The discussion perspectives presented in this paper constitute not only a basis for further research in this relevant accounting area on the role, status and developments of PSAR but also creative potential for practitioners to be more reflective on their practices and also intended and united outcomes of such practices.

This paper aims to highlight the importance of (public) value(s) and publicness in accounting and accountability research. It pinpoints a range of issues that scholars need to contemplate when reconsidering publicness in accounting research and practice.

The paper adopts an interdisciplinary literature review associated with a conceptual discussion of the actual and future challenges of public service accounting and accountability in considering public value(s).

The paper illustrates the centrality of (public) value(s) at the individual, organizational and societal levels in shaping and being shaped by calculative practices, and shows that looking at the interconnections between values and accounting is a fruitful research avenue. Moreover, it highlights the power of embracing interdisciplinary approaches to illuminate these interconnections and relate them to complex and current phenomena.

The paper’s originality lies in the reconsideration of (public) value(s) for public service accounting scholars, providing a critical reflection and setting new research avenues.