Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a picture of the state of the art in social and environmental accounting research applied to the public sector, highlighting different streams and the main gaps in current literature and providing input for future research. Design/methodology/approach A bibliometric method was used to analyse the characteristics, citation patterns and content of 38 papers published in international academic journals. Findings The findings show that the research on social and environmental reporting in the public sector is still at an early stage. Current investigations, although slowly on the increase, are still very few and localised. Most papers are about the reasons why public organisations report, what and how they report, but there are so many aspects that need to be investigated more in-depth or require extra validation in order to open new directions for future research, among which the relationship with and the differences between other non-financial type of reporting, namely ICR and IR. Research limitations/implications The study shows some limitations, mainly related to the adoption of the bibliometric method. Indeed, it does not take into account books and chapters but only papers published in international and academic journals. This leads to exclude a significant part of the existing literature and other relevant contributions on the field. Originality/value Social and environmental reporting practices are quickly spreading in the public sector. The field is particularly interesting, given the specific connotations of this kind of organisations. However, the literature is clearly not exhaustive and there is not a comprehensive and systematic review of the state of the art on the subject.

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The best presentation of a nation's cultural heritage has been a recurrent theme in the scientific and cultural debate. Few studies, however, have investigated how cultural organizations are influenced by digitization when communicating corporate social responsibility. By adopting a multiple case study approach, we investigated a sample of virtual museums and their digital CSR culture. This study contributes to the literature on CSR effectiveness in cultural organizations, by focusing on how digitization is influencing the attitude toward CSR disclosure, in order to provide suggestions for cultural managers, scholars, policymakers and practitioners alike. More specifically, this paper aims to examine stakeholders' perceptions in digital cultural organizations as a new form of social responsibility. To the best of our knowledge, this is the only study that applies this perspective to the analysis of the digitization process through CSR, currently under way across cultural institutions around the world.

This research aims to analyse social reporting in Italian Court Offices, focusing in particular on the latest Milan Court social report and to underline the problems encountered by operators when applying social reporting methodologies to complex organisations. The results are not very satisfactory: the deficiencies identified do not allow to overcome the three major issues that voluntary reporting entails. In summary, the work shows how difficult is to adopt social reporting procedures within complex institutions and the need to elaborate new methodologies. Social reporting can have a fundamental role in regenerating Public Value, therefore the study is far from being over because of the importance to check in the future the progress (or regress) of Judicial Offices along this path and to consider the need to create a specific model for these public entities.

The goal of this paper is to discuss the role System Dynamics (SD) can play to enhance performance improvement in the public sector. It is remarked how SD can help decision makers to properly perceive the boundaries of the relevant system underlying observed phenomena. To this end, three real cases are analysed to show how SD can facilitate a better understanding of the relationships between the political and the organisational system in the public sector, and how to promptly attain efficiency and improve outcome, given the constraints that the institutional and political systems constitute

PurposeThe paper aims to reach a better understanding of accountability and social reporting in the Italian justice system, by examining the state of the art of both literature and practice. The case study highlights the critical elements in drawing up the social report of one of the most important Prosecutor Offices in Italy.Design/methodology/approachThe case study analyzes the activities of the actors involved in the report building process by detailing all the steps involved in a research diary, in order to examine such process from the inside, thus reversing its perspective.FindingsThe study shows that both the lack of guidelines for judicial administrations and a consolidated trend of transforming administrative facts into documents useful to stakeholders slow down the evolution of practices, which are stuck in a perpetual trial stage.Research limitations/implicationsThe limitations are mainly related to the adoption of a single case study, which does not include any comparison with other reporting experiences in the justice sector.Originality/valueThis paper adds evidence to the theoretical debate on social reporting in the justice sector which has so far received the attention of a limited number of scholars. Furthermore, unlike other studies focusing exclusively on the final report while overlooking the process that turns input into output, this research deals with the core of the social reporting process and practices in their development, capturing their most intimate and controversial aspects from the inside.

What leadership practices can be enacted in contexts of public values failure and with low social capital to enact positive social change? This article studies public management and leadership dynamics in the “Land of Fires” (Italy), a place where waste management has historically been affected by mafia infiltration. Our research is based on a multi‐site single case study strategy with qualitative data obtained from semi‐structured interviews with several key stakeholders, including public and business managers, civil society leaders, local journalists, local politicians, regional and national politicians, and citizens in their role as co‐producers of public services. From a theoretical point of view, our findings contribute to the literature on both place leadership and collaborative governance. From a practical point of view, we shed light on the importance of four interrelated leadership practices to be enacted by public managers and civic leaders to promote positive social change: (a) to recognize and call into existence different publics; (b) to mobilize political leadership; (c) to obtain media salience; and (d) to develop institutional opportunities for enabling agonistic civic capacity.

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the strategic governance of the digital transformation of the accounting environment in cultural organizations, with a specific focus on practices of social responsibility and stakeholder engagement in virtual museums. Design/Methodology/Approach By adopting a multiple case study approach, this study investigated five Italian virtual museums and their digitalization processes. Data were collected and triangulated from multiple sources, including documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews with 16 key informants. Findings Considering the digitalization of the accounting environment as a paradigmatic change, the authors identify three key transitions for its strategic governance: from the static, technical and physical to the relational, emotional and digital; from bureaucratic managerialism to value cocreation; and from traditional CSR to integrated external engagement. Moreover, the authors found that social responsibility and stakeholder engagement practices are used in a limited way, and that the use of social media appears to be increasingly important and to be carried out through an emergent rather than a deliberate strategy. Research Limitations/Implications The paper draws from a limited sample of case studies in one country and is based on exploratory research. This paper calls for more comparative studies using a longitudinal approach to investigate the impacts of digitalization on the accounting environment of cultural organizations. Originality/Value This study is one of the few studies concentrating on the effects of digitalization on the accounting environment of cultural organizations.