Although organizations have embraced the sustainability rhetoric in their discourse and external reporting, little is known about the processes whereby management control system contributes to a deeper integration of sustainability within organizational strategy. This paper addresses this gap and mobilizes a configuration approach to theorise the roles and uses of management control system (MCS) and sustainability control system (SCS) in the integration of sustainability within organizational strategy. Building on the levers of control framework, we distinguish two possible uses of a MCS and a SCS-a diagnostic use and an interactive use-, and we specify the modes of MCS and SCS integration. We rely on these two core dimensions to identify eight organizational configurations that reflect the various uses as well as their modes of integration of SCS and MCS. We characterize these ideals-type configurations, explain their impact on the triple bottom line, and describe which mechanisms allow organizations to move from one configuration to another. In so doing, we highlight various paths toward sustainability integration or marginalization within organizations. Finally, we explain how our framework can support future research on the role of MCS and SCS in the integration of sustainability within strategy.

PurposeThis paper aims to set out several of the key issues and areas of the inter‐disciplinary field of climate change research based in accounting and accountability, and to introduce the papers that compose this AAAJ special issue.Design/methodology/approachThe paper provides an overview of issues in the science of climate, as well as an eclectic collection of independent and inter‐disciplinary contributions to accounting for climate change. Through additional accounting analysis, and a shadow carbon account, it also illustrates how organisations and nations account for and communicate their greenhouse gas (GHG) footprints and emissions behaviour.FindingsThe research shows that accounting for carbon and other GHG emissions is immensely challenging because of uncertainties in estimation methods. The research also shows the enormity of the challenge associated with reducing those emissions in the near future.Originality/valueThe paper surveys past work on a wide variety of perspectives associated with climate change science, politics and policy, as well as organisational and national emissions and accounting behaviour. It provides an overview of challenges in the area, and seeks to set an agenda for future research that remains interesting and different.

The transformative potential of accounting-sustainability hybrids has been promoted and problematized in the literature. We contribute to this debate by exploring, theoretically and empirically, the role of accounting in shaping and reshaping sustainability practices. We develop a holistic framework which we use to analyse the governing and mediating roles of accounting-sustainability hybrids in the Environment Agency (of England and Wales) and West Sussex County Council. Our analysis identifies that local accounting-sustainability hybrids contribute positively to improving eco-efficiency, have some impact on eco-effectiveness, but limited bearing on social justice. Emerging assemblages of accounting-sustainability hybrids create capacity for wider sustainability transformations, particularly through their mediating roles. However, a number of factors combine to frustrate further sustainability transformations within these organisations and those they are charged with governing. These factors include the structural constraints of the accounting-sustainability hybrids, influenced by a relatively weak local sustainability programmatic and the pressing need to meet increasing service delivery expectations in a period of severe resource constraints

In this article, the authors examine the implementation of policy aimed to promote the role of organizational networks and distributed leadership in the establishment and consolidation of public service reform. In theory, leadership and networks should complement each other, with the less hierarchical logic of the network allowing leadership of change, distributed among network members, rather than led from a single organizational apex, to flourish. In practice, as a consequence of inherent bureaucracy, power differentials between network participants, and a strong centralized performance management policy regime, a relatively parsimonious form of distributed leadership is enacted, with the networks tending towards ‘managed partnerships’.