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Research dealing with non-financial reporting formats in public sector organizations is progressively expanding. This paper systematizes the existing literature with the aim of understanding how research is developing and identifying the gaps in need of further investigation.

A structured literature review was conducted by rigorously following the steps defined in previous studies. The structured nature of the literature review paves the way for a solid understanding and critical analysis of the state of the art of research on non-financial reporting formats in public sector organizations.

The critical analysis of the literature shows that most existing studies have focused on sustainability reporting in higher education institutions, local governments and state-owned enterprises, while remaining silent on the healthcare sector. Additional theoretical and empirical approaches should feed future research. Several areas deserve further investigations that might impactfully affect public sector organizations, standard setters, practitioners and scholars.

This paper offers a comprehensive review of the literature on different reporting formats that public sector organizations adopt to report various dimensions of their performance to both internal and external stakeholders. The structured literature review enables the identification of future directions for the literature in this field.

The paper identifies the types of risks disclosed by Italian organisations using integrated reporting (IR). This paper aims to understand the level and features of risk disclosure with the adoption of IR.

The authors use risk classifications already provided in the literature to develop a content analysis of Italian organisations’ integrated reports published.

The content analysis reveals that most of the Italian organisations incorporate many types of risk disclosure into their integrated reports. Organisations use this alternative form of reporting to communicate risk differently from how they disclose risks in traditional annual financial reporting. That is, the study finds that the organisations use their integrated reports to disclose a broader group of risks, related to the environment and society, and do so using narrative and visual representation.

The paper contributes to a narrow stream of research investigating risk disclosure provided through IR, contributing to the understanding of the role of IR in representing an organisational risk.

Governmental financial reporting is prepared for accountability and decision-making purposes and is directed to a wide range of users, including citizens. However, this may sound easier than it actually is as citizens without specific accounting knowledge may find it difficult to understand the financial information prepared by governments. The study analyzes citizens' perceptions toward infographics as well as their ability to improve accounting understandability by nonaccounting experts compared to the traditional financial statements.

The paper presents the results of an exploratory analysis conducted with the participation of a group of citizens in three European countries through a questionnaire.

The results show that infographics improve accounting understandability by nonaccounting experts compared to the traditional financial statements. However, infographics alone are not enough to succeed in making nonaccounting literate citizens experts in fully understanding accounting information.

The novelty of the research consists in its ability to give voice to citizens' preferences regarding the way the financial information is presented, which has been largely neglected by previous studies. In parallel, it analyzes the effect of accounting knowledge on accounting understandability. Moreover, it is the first study that analyzes the use of infographics in public sector financial reporting.

This paper undertakes a structured literature review to analyse the literature on performance management and measurement (PMM) in universities over the last four decades. Over that time, PMM has emerged as an influential force in universities that impacts their operations and redefines their identity.

A structured literature review approach was used to analyse a sample of articles on PMM research from a broad range of disciplines over four decades. This was undertaken to understand the impacts of PMM practices on universities, highlight changes over time and point to avenues for future research.

The analysis highlights the fact that research on PMM in universities has grown significantly over the 40 years studied. We provide an overview of published articles over four decades regarding content, themes, theories, methods and impacts. We provide an empirical basis for discussing past, present and future university PMM research. The future research avenues offer multiple provocations for scholars and policymakers, for instance, PMM implementation strategies and relationships with various government programs and external evaluation and the role of different actors, particularly academics, in shaping PMM systems.

Unlike a traditional literature review, the structured literature review method can develop insights into how the field has changed over time and highlight possible future research. The sample for this literature review differs from previous reviews in covering a broad range of disciplines, including accounting.

This paper aims to trace subsequent steps of the sustainability reporting evolution in terms of changes in the organisation fields and professional jurisdictions involved. As such, it highlights the (interrelated) organisational and professional challenges associated with the progressive incorporation of “sustainability” within corporate reporting.

The paper draws on Suddaby and Viale’s (2011) theorisation of how professionals reshape organisational fields to highlight how organisational spaces, actors, rules and professional capital evolve alongside the incorporation of sustainability within corporate reporting.

The paper shows organisational spaces, actors, rules and professional capital mobilised during the recent evolution of sustainability reporting, starting from a period in which there was no space for sustainability, to more recent periods in which sustainability gained increasing momentum beyond initial niches, and culminating in more integrated forms of sustainability reporting.

Although the analysis is limited to empirical evidence collected by prior research and practice on sustainability reporting, the paper offers a view to imagine how the incorporation of sustainability within corporate reporting relies on and affects organisational fields and professional jurisdictions.

The paper offers a lens to interpret corporate and professional challenges associated with the more recent evolutions of sustainability reporting practice and standard setting. It also allows framing the papers accepted in the special issue on “new challenges in sustainability reporting” and concludes by suggesting an agenda for future research.

This paper aims to explore the reporting challenges and related organisational mechanisms of change associated with disclosing corporate risks within integrated reports.

This paper adopts a Latourian performative approach to explore the organisational mechanisms of change in terms of networks of actors, both “human” and “non-human”, involved in the preparation of risk-related disclosure. Empirical evidence is collected by means of in-depth interviews with the preparers of an integrated reporting pioneer company.

Preparing disclosure on corporate risks in the context of integrated reporting demands close interaction among several actors. When disclosure shifts from listing key risks to providing information on how these risks are managed or connect with corporate strategy and value creation, departments not usually involved in corporate reporting play an active role and external stakeholders offer pertinent insights, benchmarks and feedback. Integrated reporting and risk management frameworks are the “non-human” actors that facilitate the engagement of diverse “human” actors.

Preparers should be aware that risk disclosure within integrated reports requires collaboration among (“human”) actors belonging to different departments and the engagement of external stakeholders. Preparers should consider the frameworks of integrated reporting and risk management as facilitators of cross-departmental discussions and dialogue, rather than mere contributors of guidelines and recommendations.

This study enriches the scant literature on organisational mechanisms of change made in response to integrated reporting challenges, showing subsequent advancements in the organisational process underlying the preparation of risk disclosure.

The aim of this paper is to provide evidence of the relationship between the governance structure of universities and the universities' knowledge transfer (KT) performance outcomes measured in terms of university spin-off firms university spin-offs (USOs).

The universities' board of directors has been analyzed under three profiles: the incidence of internal directors belonging to the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) faculties, the incidence of women directors and the incidence of external directors.

The findings provide evidence of a significant and positive association, for southern Italian state universities, of the presence of university STEM directors and the establishment of university spin-offs (USOs).

The article is original as, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study, except for the paper by Meoli et al. (2019), examined the governance of universities in relation to the establishment of academic spin-offs.