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: Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal
Publisher: Emerald Publishing
Submission deadline: 1 December 2026

This special issue critically examines how sustainability assurance is reshaping the “audit society”, reconfiguring accountability, professional identities, and governance beyond traditional financial audit. It invites theoretical and empirical work from diverse traditions (institutional theory, sociology of professions, critical audit studies, STS, etc.) that explore how audit and assurance practices govern planetary futures, social justice, and pluriversal politics.

Types of research this SI invites

Guest editors

Prof Othmar M. Lehner, Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland
Prof Hendrik Vollmer, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, UK
Prof Lies Bouten, IESEG School of Management, Univ. Lille, CNRS, LEM, Lille, France

List of suggested topic areas

• Planetary and biopolitical accountability in sustainability assurance

• Ethics, social justice, and whose voices are silenced in assurance engagements

• Decolonial, linguistic, and transnational translations of assurance across Global South–North contexts

• Practice‑based and participatory methodologies to study the micro‑politics of assurance work

• Audit expectation gaps and legitimacy struggles in sustainability assurance

• Boundary objects, hybridisation, and “accounting–sustainability” translation work

• Key Audit Matters, transparency practices, and perceptions of auditor judgment

• Institutional work in the emergence and resistance of sustainability assurance

• Auditor identities and professional jurisdictions across financial audit, consultancy, and public accountability

• Surveillance, traceability, and digitalisation (platforms, algorithms, data‑fication) in audit practice

• Public interest, pluralistic values, and double materiality in assurance

• Group judgment and cross‑professional collaboration in multi‑professional assurance settings

• Historical and comparative perspectives on financial versus sustainability audit transformations

Submission information

Submissions are made via ScholarOne Manuscripts from 1 September 2026 to 1 December 2026.
Submit via: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/aaaj

Select the special issue title from the drop‑down menu at the step “Please select the issue you are submitting to”.
Follow the journal’s Author Guidelines: https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/aaaj

Abstracts (up to 1,500 words, references excluded) are invited by 1 April 2026 and should be sent to Prof Othmar Lehner (othmar.lehner@hanken.fi) for a pre‑submission paper development workshop on 12 June 2026. Attendance at the workshop is not a condition for publication.

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