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The rapid growth of tourism prior to the COVID-19 pandemic prompts the need for critical reflection of tourism’s “local-global” responsibility in the wake of that pandemic. Conceptually driven by the ancient Greek notion of hubris, this study reflects on the perception of tourists as actors disconnected from citizens’ necessities, safety and well-being. In so doing we develop further knowledge on the relationship between the spaces of tourism and citizenship and how this might build a sustainable future-proof tourism.

Data were collected daily for two weeks via three Google Alert queries set to mine Italian online news media contents immediately after the Italian Government’s adoption of mobility restrictions due to COVID-19. This study uses a thematic narrative analysis to examine the contents related to tourists during the COVID-19 outbreak.

The exploratory findings reveal how tourists are largely presented as taking over the space of local residents and, by breaking the rules set by national and local authorities, as disregarding those residents’ safety and well-being. Hence, they appear disconnected from any sense of belonging to a local or global community, and from a space to which they owe a duty of care.

By framing tourists as hubristic subjects ontologically belonging to a neoliberal leisure space disentangled from the citizenship space, this study establishes a novel theoretical grounding from which a sustainable future-proof tourism that is rooted in citizenship space can be rethought.

This paper aims to better understand how accountability for sustainability takes shape within organisations and specifically, what makes employees act in a Swedish local authority. This aim moves beyond the prevalent external face of accountability in social and environmental accounting research by observing how employees understand and act upon their multiple accountability demands.

This paper adopts a single case study approach within a Swedish local authority, drawing from qualitative data including semi-structured interviews, site visits and governing documents.

Sustainable action is not only the product of hierarchically enforced structural accountabilities and procedures but often must be reconciled with the personal perspectives of the public sector employees involved as part of an accountability dynamic. Additionally, the findings reveal that hierarchical accountability, rather than serving to individualise and isolate employees, acts as a prompt for the more practical and personal reconciliations of accountability with the ethics and experiences of the individual involved.

Greater consideration to employee socialisation processes in public sector organisations should be given to reinforce organisational governance systems and controls, and thus help ensure sustainable behaviour in practice.

Employee socialisation processes are important for the development of sustainable practices both within and beyond organisational boundaries.

This study considers the interrelatedness of hierarchical and socialising accountability measures and contributes towards the understanding of the relationship between these two accountability forms, contrary to previous understandings that emphasise their contrasting nature and incompatibility.

Motivated to know more about the internal means through which accountability for sustainability takes shape within organisations (in what ways and by whom), this paper aims to explore how accountability for sustainability is constructed within an organisation during a process of establishing a control system for sustainability.

This paper adopts a qualitative case study approach of a decentralised industrial group, operating mainly in Scandinavia, between 2017 and 2020. Both primary and secondary data are used (e.g. document analyses, semi-structured interviews, informal conversations and site visits) to inform the findings and analysis.

The findings reveal a multi-faceted path towards accountability for sustainability that involves several concerns and priorities at organisational and individual levels, resulting in a separate sustainability control systems within each subsidiary company. Although hierarchical structures for accountability exist, socialising accountability activities are needed to (further) mobilise sustainable accounts.

Successful sustainable control systems require employees making sense of formalised accountability instruments (e.g. policies and procedures) to establish their roles and responsibilities in organisations.

This paper proposes socialisation processes as important for driving forward sustainability solutions.

This study elaborates on the internal accountability dynamic for the construction of sustainable accounts. Its novelty is built upon the interaction of hierarchical and socialising accountability forms as necessary for establishing a control system for sustainability. It furthermore illustrates the relationship between the external and internal pathways of accountability.