Exploring Accounting-Sustainability Hybridisation in the UK Public Sector

A growing amount of attention is being directed to the potential role of accounting-sustainability hybrids, but only a small part of the literature presents an empirical analysis of how these hybrids interact with government strategies and, as mediating instruments, drive a sustainability transformation. In this article, the authors develop a holistic framework on the mediating and governing (transforming) role of accounting-sustainability hybrids based on an in-depth analysis of the prior literature on this issue. The transformative role assumed by the hybrids in the governing practices and policies is analysed through the four dimensions of the framework: their local programmatic discourses; the construction/selection of the mediating tools for sustainability into the practice; the embedding of these tools in the governing processes; and the translation of these social-accounting hybrids into the governing process.