Introduction to the Handbook of Accounting and Public Governance

Public governance development has reshaped the boundaries of public sector accounting and proposed new questions regarding how to understand and theorise accountability, performance measurement, budgeting and reporting practices to preserve public value. This chapter introduces public governance as a core theme of contemporary research in public administration, public management and accounting. We present three influential and co-existing paradigms of public governance development - network governance, collaborative governance and digital governance - to structure the discussion in the Handbook. For the book, “accounting” constitutes an object of examination, “public governance” a politico-administrative context where respective accountings are instantiated, and “hybridisation” provides an overarching viewpoint to understand the collaborative, inter-institutional, cross-sectoral and society-wide dynamics of public governance. The Handbook collects contributions on theoretical developments, core research topics and empirical applications for the most important accounting practices and provides novel understanding of the key concerns across those areas.