Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue and outline its major themes and challenges, their relevance and the research opportunities the field presents. Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews prior literature and outline’s the need to analyse challenges for corporate governance and accountability of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) as a precursor to introducing the contributions to this special issue. Findings – Corporate governance, accounting and accountability of SOEs are crucial and growing topics in public management and other research disciplines. Public service provision and budget consolidation cannot be realized effectively and efficiently without powerful governance and management of SOEs. However there are significant corporate governance challenges and important empirical research gaps in comparison to other fields. Broader theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches, accountability mechanisms and sector/context are identified and discussed and encouraged in future research. Research limitations/implications – This paper aims to stimulate interdisciplinary research on emerging issues affecting governance and accountability of SOEs considering their growing importance in the society and their changing nature. Practical implications – Effective mechanisms and good practices may contribute to better performance of SOEs. Findings may help politicians, administrations, board members, auditors, consultants, scholars and the media striving for improvements around the world. Originality/value – The paper condenses theoretical and empirical findings to highlight the relevance of this field and important research gaps. The special issue offers an empirical examination of interdisciplinary literature and innovative experiences of SOEs to strengthen public service motivation, board composition and roles, trust and control, transparency, public value and to enhance the ability to manage, steer and monitor contracts, performance and relationships.

Studies of the performance effects of performance-related pay (PRP) and otherregarding motivations such as public service motivation (PSM) show that organizational goals and ownership structure play a crucial role, but these determinants are underresearched. In narrowing this gap, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are relevant research objects. However, this systematic literature review categorizing different types of public sector organization reveals that only 9% of the 232 identified articles examine SOEs. On that basis, this article develops a research agenda for examining the performance effects of the combination of PRP and PSM/other-regarding motivations in SOEs as a foundation for future research in different disciplines.

Public sector recruitment is an urgent and prevailing challenge in both research and practice. Public employer branding is an important subject in the theoretical debate, but the mechanisms behind how certain signals of public employers affect individuals' interest in a job are under-researched. By bridging signaling theory, social identity theory, and personnel economics, this study analyzes the effects of signals in advertisements related to societal impact, job security, and performance orientation on different gender/age-based target groups. This series of pre-registered social media field experiments (n = 196,822 persons) with four public employers examines the degree to which these signals affect individuals' interest in a job at a public employer. The results do not show an overall impact of the signals but target group-specific effects-gender has a significant effect and age for certain public employers. Compared with the societal impact signal, the job security signal has a slightly stronger effect.

Self‐regulation has become a crucial governance mechanism for policymaking and political control. Although governments have increasingly implemented self‐regulation, its effects are under‐researched. International policymakers highlight the role of self‐regulation in extending accountability and political control of state‐owned enterprises (SOEs). A key accountability area—attracting widespread public interest—is the level of executive directors' pay. Drawing on agency theory, this study analyzes 2,112 pay disclosures of 700 executive directors employed in 289 German SOEs between 2014 and 2017. The results indicate that both self‐regulation and its quality have significant effects on behavior control. Further, the complementary adoption of self‐regulation and law has the strongest effects on principals' and agents' behavior and awareness. For the debate on board composition, it is important to note that a higher proportion of politicians as directors on SOE boards weakens the effects of self‐regulation. Overall, this study enhances the theoretical understanding of self‐regulation and provides important policy implications.

Corporatization has potentials for public service provision but also induces far-reaching governance challenges. Appointing executives for public corporations is a powerful personnel governance mechanism for public authorities to manage public service provision and resource dependencies. However, the theoretical understanding of executive turnover is limited. Drawing on resource dependence theory and embedding publicness fit perspectives, Cox regressions for 491 executives of 275 German municipal corporations between 2006 and 2016 show that politicized executives, executives with higher pay, and internally hired executives have a longer tenure and a lower turnover likelihood. Furthermore, the findings reveal different governance rationalities between different corporation forms by showing a higher likelihood of executive turnover in not profit-making corporations than in profit-making corporations. This highlights the theoretical needs and potentials to conceptually differentiate between these two corporation forms in future research. Overall, this study enhances the theoretical understanding of executive turnover and provides important research perspectives. Die politischen Entscheidungen zur Auslagerung öffentlicher Aufgaben auf öffentliche Unternehmen haben hohe Potenziale