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That on accountability in public organizations is quite an old debate. Its introduction in judicial systems is, however, still viewed with some suspicion, due to its potential trade-off with independence and impartiality. Nevertheless, the need to respond to the demands for greater transparency and accountability has also pushed judicial organizations to establish a dialogue with a wide range of subjects. This study aims to explore the understanding and the current practices of sustainability reporting currently in place in judicial systems.

The study adopts a comparative approach, conducting an online survey in two European countries (Italy and Poland). The survey was built around the research questions and literature and administered between February and March 2020. Specifically, 804 courts were involved, of which 430 are in Italy and 374 in Poland.

Findings show that the current practices are still not widespread and there is still a lack of understanding of what sustainability reporting is, and therefore, of what its potential usefulness within the courts could be. Moreover, many differences between the two countries are pointed out, so it is possible to assume that the different cultural and institutional settings influence sustainability reporting practices. Finally, some interesting implications for policymakers are provided.

Judicial organizations are still poorly investigated in the literature, despite being at the center of a wide public and political debate. Moreover, the international comparative perspective adopted constitutes a further aspect of novelty.

This study aims to explore to what extent stakeholder engagement affects the sustainability reporting (SR) process and if it succeeds in facilitating the encounter between demand and supply of accountability, as well as the main challenges of this practice, by focusing on a crucial and under-investigated public sector area, the judicial system.

The study adopts an action research (AR) approach. Specifically, it focuses on a specific phase (i.e. stakeholder engagement) of the broader project that was carried on from 2019 in an Italian Public Prosecutor’s Office. Data were collected from multiple sources, i.e. written notes and reports gathered during meetings, the survey administered to stakeholders and the published sustainability reports.

Stakeholder engagement may be a valuable and effective tool for improving the level of accountability, as it increases the responsiveness of SR to the informative needs of stakeholders. However, the study also highlights some critical points that must be addressed to exploit this fully. Among these is the need to act upstream of the process by working on an accounting system that goes beyond the economic dynamics and can effectively answer the accountability demand.

The study contributes to theoretical and empirical knowledge by exploring a topic and a public sphere still limited investigated, i.e. the stakeholder engagement in sustainability in the judicial sector. The AR approach also presents some originality points, as it is low widespread in management and accounting literature.

Understanding the outcomes of co-creation (CC) in healthcare is increasingly gaining multidisciplinary scientific interest. Although more and more service management scholars have pointed out the benefits of cross-fertilization between the various research fields, the literature on this topic is still scattered and poorly integrated. This study aims to summarize and integrate multiple strands of extant knowledge CC by identifying the outcomes of health CC and the determinants of these outcomes and their relationships.

A structured literature review was conducted per PRISMA guidelines. A total of 4,189 records were retrieved from the six databases; 1,983 articles were screened, with 161 included in the qualitative thematic analysis.

This study advances a comprehensive framework for healthcare CC based on a thorough analysis of the outcomes and their determinants, that is, antecedents, management activities and institutional context. Extant research rarely evaluates outcomes from a multidimensional and systemic perspective. Less attention has been paid to the relationship among the CC process elements.

This study offers an agenda to guide future studies on healthcare CC. Highlighting some areas of integration among different disciplines further advances service literature.

The framework offers an operational guide to better shape managerial endeavors to facilitate CC, provide direction and assess multiple outcomes.

This is the first extensive attempt to synthesize and integrate multidisciplinary knowledge on CC outcomes in healthcare settings by adopting a systematic perspective on the overall process.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the financial structure of Italian cooperatives in the period before and during the crisis (2004-2013), in relation to two discriminating factors. At this end, it focuses on two research questions: What financial dynamics the Italian cooperatives have involved before, during and after the 2008 crisis, that is, in the decade 2004/2013? Are there statistically differences between business sectors and geographic area?

Secondary data on AIDA database have been used. The financial structure is assessed using two ratios: the financial leverage ratio and quick ratio. The final sample consists of 1,446 cooperatives. The trend and exploratory analysis, analysis of variance and Tukey-Kramer post-hoc test have been used.

The financial structure of cooperatives has not been substantially affected by the crisis in any geographic area and business sector, by virtue of resilience of their business model. Moreover, these two factors produce statistically significant differences in the financial structure of cooperatives.

The study takes into account only the cooperatives that survived the crisis, so, presumably, the strongest. Moreover, another and more ratios should be considered at the end to have a more complete view on the financial dynamics.

The literature on resilience of cooperatives is still not very rich. Moreover, this work analyses and integrates aspects and approaches that are not usually considered together.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a picture of the state of the art in social and environmental accounting research applied to the public sector, highlighting different streams and the main gaps in current literature and providing input for future research.

A bibliometric method was used to analyse the characteristics, citation patterns and content of 38 papers published in international academic journals.

The findings show that the research on social and environmental reporting in the public sector is still at an early stage. Current investigations, although slowly on the increase, are still very few and localised. Most papers are about the reasons why public organisations report, what and how they report, but there are so many aspects that need to be investigated more in-depth or require extra validation in order to open new directions for future research, among which the relationship with and the differences between other non-financial type of reporting, namely ICR and IR.

The study shows some limitations, mainly related to the adoption of the bibliometric method. Indeed, it does not take into account books and chapters but only papers published in international and academic journals. This leads to exclude a significant part of the existing literature and other relevant contributions on the field.

Social and environmental reporting practices are quickly spreading in the public sector. The field is particularly interesting, given the specific connotations of this kind of organisations. However, the literature is clearly not exhaustive and there is not a comprehensive and systematic review of the state of the art on the subject.