Accounting and Resilience: critical perspectives on building and evaluating resilience in uncertain times

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Introduction

Resilience studies highlight the capacity of social and ecological systems to adjust, recover, and thrive despite adversity (Nyström et al., 2019; Olsson et al., 2015). Recent literature emphasises resilience as a multidimensional construct, covering individual, organisational, and system levels and extending across supply chains, financial management, and leadership dynamics (Hillmann & Guenther, 2021; Linnenluecke, 2017; Raetze et al., 2021). Resilience, therefore, is seen as a valuable asset and forms part of a broader trend towards strength-based as opposed to deficit models of development (Aranda et al., 2012). The concept of resilience has gained substantial traction across disciplines, particularly as we face increasing disruptions from economic, social, and environmental crises (Barbera et al., 2020; Barbera et al., 2017; Carpenter et al., 2009; Linnenluecke & Griffiths, 2010; Parker, 2024; Burnet, 2023; Branicki et al., 2023). These disruptions have challenged the ability of our social and economic systems to withstand and adapt to crises, highlighting significant gaps in how they anticipate, respond to, recover from and potentially capitalise on such events. While sustainability research has long played a crucial role in accounting by encouraging positive change and working towards long-term viability, resilience studies offer a complementary perspective. Resilience emphasises the need for long-term sustainability and the capacity to endure, adapt, and transform in response to unexpected challenges. This dynamic perspective captures the complexities of managing uncertainty and disruption, aiming to foster a more robust and adaptable environment. By integrating resilience into accounting, technologies, logic and thinking, we strive for long-term sustainable outcomes and short-term adaptability. In an era shaped by climate change, global pandemics, economic instability, and geopolitical disorder, accounting scholars are well-placed to respond to these challenges by providing alternative perspectives that meet the growing demand for sustainable and resilient solutions (Tregidga and Laine, 2022).

By advancing this research agenda, this AAAJ special issue aims to contribute to the academic debate on the role of accounting in fostering resilience ('accounting for resilience') and understanding and evaluating resilience ('accounting of resilience'). We encourage submissions that explore accounting as a tool for understanding resilience and as a mechanism for fostering adaptation, transformation and resistance (when core values, principles, or resources are at risk in the face of threats) in response to social, economic, and ecological challenges. At the same time, we invite research that questions how and why current accounting practices may be inadequate in supporting resilience and, in many cases, may even contribute to the vulnerability of socio-ecological systems.

Accounting for and of resilience holds the potential to illuminate how accounting can be used to empower marginalised communities, promote equity, address issues of inequality and climate adaptation, and inform strategic responses, particularly in times of crisis (Bebbington et al., 2023; Cho et al., 2022). However, it is equally essential to scrutinise how traditional accounting practices may exacerbate inequalities and vulnerabilities, potentially hindering the development of genuinely resilient systems. Critical accounting scholars can and should play a role in fostering a deeper understanding of resilience by developing theories and practices that consider both sides of resilience: the mechanisms that help us understand and evaluate resilience in social structures ('accounting of') and the actions that contribute to fostering and shaping resilience ('accounting for'). This perspective encourages research that critically examines how current structures of human behaviour, like capitalism, maintain resilience and how accounting can actively shape these structures to support a transformation towards a resilient future.

We call for academic work that promotes theoretical and empirical understanding of resilience, explicitly focusing on intersections of accounting and power, the political economy of resilience, the politics of resilience, and the allocation of resources in times of crisis. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, accounting's role in sustainable development, the impact of accounting practices on communities during periods of disruption, and resilience in public sector or community contexts.

List of Topic Areas

We welcome the submission of full papers that address the following and related areas:

• Accounting for and of Resilience: examining how resilience is constructed, measured, and communicated through accounting and accountability practices and whose interests it serves.
• Interdisciplinary perspectives: integrating resilience thinking from natural and social sciences into accounting frameworks.
• Constructing resilient systems: investigating how accounting defines and constructs the boundaries of "systems" (e.g., organisational, community, or social-ecological) when conceptualising, calculating and reporting resilience.
• Politics of resilience: deconstructing resilience as a technical concept and highlighting its political and ethical dimensions.
• Accountability and resilience: exploring how accountability mechanisms can be designed to incorporate resilience metrics and their implications.
• Auditing and resilience: questioning whether auditing captures resilience complexities or reinforces narrow compliance-driven views.
• Resilient economy: analysing accounting's role in building sustainable, equitable, and stable economic systems.
• Theoretical contributions: developing critical theoretical models that challenge dominant resilience paradigms.
• Empirical studies: applying qualitative or quantitative methods to examine how resilience is operationalised in practice.

We welcome interdisciplinary research that applies various methodological and theoretical approaches to provide in-depth, novel insights into the above areas.

Submission Instructions

We invite authors to align their work with Emerald’s commitment to #DefendResearch and with the Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal’s Statement of Scholarly Values 2025 (at the bottom of this call).

Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Author guidelines must be strictly followed.

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Author Guidelines

Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to “Please select the issue you are submitting to”. 

Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.

Key Dates

Opening date for manuscripts submissions: 31st May 2026

Closing date for full paper submissions: 31st August 2026

Contact

If you would like to discuss the special issue and your potential contribution, please get in touch with Laura Mazzola at [email protected].

Guest Editors 

Laura Mazzola (Royal Holloway Business School, UK)

Leonardo Rinaldi (Royal Holloway Business School, UK)

Ileana Steccolini (University of Essex, UK)

Martina Linnenluecke (University of Technology Sydney, Australia)

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal (AAAJ) Statement of Scholarly Values 2025

AAAJ continues to publish leading-edge research concerning the interaction between accounting, auditing, accountability and their socio-economic, institutional and political environments. Through innovation in research design and issue analysis, we encourage critical investigation of policy and practice alternatives and the impact of accounting on the full spectrum of organisations, communities and society.

AAAJ's mission is to expand our understanding of and creative solutions to important accounting, auditing, and accountability issues globally. That mission remains committed to including critical and historical perspectives on contemporary issues and problems, addressing political influences on policy-making, examining social and political aspects of accounting, auditing and accountability, and embracing the full spectrum of the societal constituency we are committed to supporting.