The collection of papers in this special issue has primarily been drawn from the papers representing the ''Corporate Governance and accountability in the Public Sector'' stream of the Seventh International Critical Management Studies Conference (CMS 7), which was held at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy, in July 2011. The stream was inspired by international reforms focussed on the modernization of governments. These reforms have been implemented at central, regional and local levels, and are based on the assumption that improving the mechanisms of governance and accountability will enhance the performance results in the public sector (Aucoin, 1990; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011). A wide range of actors have been involved in the public sector reforms, such as corporations, foundations, and other agencies including both private and intergovernmental actors. They have all played a role in defining the requirements for new governance and accountability mechanisms (Christensen and Laegreid, 2007). In this respect, the focus has particularly been on how governance and accountability have become diffused in the public sector context and how the multiple actors interact in this new arena (Dubnick, 2005; Humphrey et al., 1993; Mulgan, 2000). The remainder of this editorial is structured as follows. Section 2 introduces some views on governance and accountability in connection with the public sector reforms. Section 3 gives a synopsis of the contributions to this special issue from the perspective of the broader domain of public sector governance and accountability. Finally, Section 4 reflects on the papers and offers some perspectives for future research. 2. Views on public sector governance and accountability In order to understand the changing roles of governance and accountability as part of the recent public sector reforms, we will firstly introduce some general notions regarding public sector governance and accountability. Subsequently, we will introduce the concepts of New Public Management (NPM) and New Public Governance (NPG) as recent reform packages, and show the role of governance and accountability therein. 2.1. Governance and accountability ''Governance'' has become one of the buzz-words in modern social sciences. In the most general sense governance deals with the steering and coordination of various actors, often in network-type patterns of collaboration (see classical works on governance, e.g. Rhodes, 1997 or Kooiman, 2003). Although there are also cases of ''governance without government'', usually a governance structure contains at least one governmental institution. Governance is an umbrella term which includes different meanings and perceptions and is widely used in political sciences as well as in economics and management. Although governance also covers hierarchical forms of steering (''government''), it is usually associated with other governance modes, primarily markets or networks (Bevir, 2009). To indicate control issues in the context of corporations the term ''corporate governance'' w...