Governing Futures: Sustainability Assurance and the Reconfiguration of the Audit Society

Call for Papers

Governing Futures: Sustainability Assurance and the Reconfiguration of the Audit Society

JOURNAL NAME: Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal

PUBLISHER: Emerald Publishing

ABSTRACT DEADLINE: 01 April 2026

SUBMISSION OPENS: 01 September 2026

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 01 December 2026

ABOUT THIS SPECIAL ISSUE

For more than three decades, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal has advanced a vision of accounting scholarship as a civic and moral project rather than a narrow technical domain. Its pages have persistently urged scholars to interrogate how accounting and auditing mediate the relationship between economic order, social justice, and ecological survival.

The contemporary expansion of assurance into the sustainability arena reactivates core AAAJ concerns — the politics of expertise, the plurality of value, and the search for a more equitable society through accountability. Yet the present moment also introduces qualitatively new conditions. Audit and assurance now intervene in domains of life, climate, and planetary risk that exceed traditional regimes of verification, raising questions not only of institutional adaptation but also new ethical dilemmas, epistemic challenges, and questions of ontological design.

Since the late twentieth century, the "audit society" thesis has provided a generative lens through which to examine how auditing extends beyond technical verification to the recasting of societal risks and uncertainties into auditable form. As audit is increasingly drawn into the governance of sustainability, climate risk, and social responsibility, we confront a critical inflection point. Audit today is no longer only a ritual of verification but a field in which the boundaries between professional authority, organisational identity, and societal imaginaries are unsettled and renegotiated.

This special issue invites contributions that critically examine the audit society in the age of sustainability assurance, probing the shifting identities of auditors, the recursive dynamics of expectation and legitimacy, and the transformations of organisational and institutional processes that follow. Theoretical and empirical papers from all traditions are welcome, drawing from diverse methodologies and frameworks — from the sociology of professions to actor-network theory, institutional theory, critical audit studies, economic sociology, and science and technology studies.

SCOPE & THEME AREAS

We invite submissions addressing (but not limited to) the following themes:

1. Planetary and biopolitical accountability — How assurance practices translate planetary limits, biodiversity loss, or climate risk into auditable form and how audit participates in the governance of life and the environment.

2. Ethics and social justice in assurance — How the expanding remit of sustainability audit redefines the moral economy of accountability and whose voices and vulnerabilities are recognised or silenced.

3. Decolonial, linguistic, and transnational translations — How assurance is localised across global South-North contexts and how post-colonial epistemologies challenge Western audit rationalities.

4. Practice-based and participatory methodologies — How experimental, ethnographic, or action-research designs can reveal the micro-politics of assurance work and the reflexive production of legitimacy.

5. Audit expectation gaps and sustainability assurance — How sustainability engagements reshape traditional distinctions of reasonableness, standards, and performance, and generate new legitimacy struggles.

6. Boundary objects, hybridisation, and translation work — The role of concepts such as "materiality," "assurance levels," or "sustainability risks" as mediating devices between professional, organisational, and institutional domains.

7. Key audit matters and transparency practices — How the articulation of KAMs and equivalent disclosures in sustainability reports transform perceptions of audit judgement, credibility, and public accountability.

8. Institutional work — How professionals establish, promote, or resist the institutionalisation of sustainability assurance and how it shapes the formation of new professional fields and regulatory infrastructures.

9. Auditor identities and professional jurisdictions — How audit firms and individual practitioners navigate competing logics of financial audit, sustainability consultancy, and broader public accountability.

10. Surveillance, traceability, and digitalisation — Effects of platformisation, algorithmic verification, and datafication on the epistemics of audit practice and professional authority.

11. Public interest, value(s), and materiality — How pluralistic notions of publicness, planetary concerns, and double materiality are constructed, resisted, or institutionalised in assurance engagements.

12. Group judgement and cross-professional collaboration — How auditors coordinate with specialists, regulators, and clients in multi-professional contexts, shaping assurance outcomes.

13. Historical and comparative perspectives — How earlier transformations of financial auditing illuminate the present trajectory of sustainability assurance.

GUEST EDITORS

Prof. Othmar M. Lehner Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland ✉️ othmar.lehner@hanken.fi

Prof. Hendrik Vollmer Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, UK ✉️ hendrik.vollmer@wbs.ac.uk

Prof. Lies Bouten IESEG School of Management, Université de Lille, France ✉️ l.bouten@ieseg.fr

KEY DEADLINES & DATES

PRE-SUBMISSION WORKSHOP

A hybrid paper development workshop will be held on 12 June 2026 at Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland (also accessible online via Teams), the day after the CSEAR Meeting in Tampere, Finland. Authors can present their ideas and receive constructive feedback before full submission.

To participate: Send an extended abstract (maximum 1,500 words, excluding references) to ✉️ othmar.lehner@hanken.fi by 01 April 2026. The abstract should address:

• The phenomenon of interest and its theoretical and social relevance

• How existing literature fails to explain the phenomenon

• Intended contributions to the literature

Please note: Attending the workshop is not a prerequisite for submission and will not influence the editorial process.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

How to submit: Manuscripts must be submitted via ScholarOne Manuscripts, strictly following the journal's author guidelines.

Selecting the special issue: At the appropriate submission step, authors must select the special issue title from the drop-down menu in response to "Please select the issue you are submitting to."

Eligibility: Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication elsewhere while under review.

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