“Accounting and Resilience: Critical Perspectives on Building and Evaluating Resilience in Uncertain Times”

Call for Papers – Special Issue: “Accounting and Resilience: Critical Perspectives on Building and Evaluating Resilience in Uncertain Times”

Journal: Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal
Publisher: Emerald Publishing
Full‑paper deadline: 31 August 2026

This special issue examines how accounting, auditing, and accountability practices shape the way resilience is understood, built, and evaluated in the face of economic, social, and environmental crises. It distinguishes between “accounting for resilience”—using accounting as a tool to foster adaptation and transformation—and “accounting of resilience”—using accounting to measure, represent, and communicate resilience. The SI invites critical and interdisciplinary work that links resilience theory to the politics, power, and ethics of accounting in uncertain and turbulent times.

Why this issue matters

• Contemporary crises—climate change, pandemics, economic instability, and geopolitical disorder—have exposed the fragility of socio‑economic and ecological systems and raised questions about how accounting and financial management practices support or undermine resilience.​

• Resilience is increasingly treated as a strategic asset at individual, organisational, community, and system levels, yet there is little critical work on how accounting frames, measures, and governs resilience and whose interests are served.​

• AAAJ’s mission to explore the socio‑economic, institutional, and political dimensions of accounting and auditing aligns naturally with a critical perspective on how accounting can help build and evaluate resilience in organisations, communities, and broader socio‑ecological systems.

Core themes and research topics

The special issue welcomes conceptual, empirical, and critical studies that connect accounting and resilience across different domains. Key topics include:

• Accounting for and of resilience

  • How resilience is constructed, measured, and communicated through accounting and accountability practices, and whose interests and values are reflected.​

• Interdisciplinary resilience frameworks

  • Integrating resilience thinking from ecology, social sciences, and complexity studies into accounting and audit.​

• Constructing resilient systems

  • How accounting defines the boundaries of “systems” (organisational, community, social‑ecological) when conceptualising, calculating, and reporting resilience.​

• The politics and ethics of resilience

  • Critically examining how resilience narratives can depoliticise risk, normalise austerity, or reinforce existing inequalities.​

• Accountability, audit, and resilience

  • Designing accountability mechanisms and auditing approaches that capture resilience complexity rather than narrow compliance views.​

• Resilient economies and communities

  • How accounting supports or hinders sustainable, equitable, and stable economic systems and community‑based adaptation.​

• Critical theory and method

  • Developing novel theoretical models and methodological approaches that challenge dominant resilience and accounting paradigms.​

The SI explicitly encourages interdisciplinary and international comparative work, including case studies from public‑sector, corporate, nonprofit, and community‑based settings.

Guest editors

• Dr. Laura Mazzola, Royal Holloway Business School, UK

• Dr. Leonardo Rinaldi, Royal Holloway Business School, UK

• Prof. Lee Parker, University of Glasgow, UK

• Prof. Ileana Steccolini, University of Essex, UK

• Prof. Martina Linnenluecke, University of Technology Sydney, Australia

Submission details

• Submission platform: ScholarOne Manuscripts for AAAJ:
  https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/aaaj

• When submitting, select the special issue title “Accounting and Resilience: critical perspectives on building and evaluating resilience in uncertain times”.

• Submission window:

  • Submissions open: 31 May 2026

  • Full‑paper deadline: 31 August 2026

• Manuscripts must be original and not under review elsewhere, and must follow the journal’s Author Guidelines.

This special issue is ideal for accounting, auditing, public‑administration, and critical‑management scholars interested in how accounting can help build and evaluate resilience in uncertain and crisis‑prone times.

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