# Accountability and Reporting for Sustainability and Public Value: Challenges in the Public Sector
## 2 Literature Review on Value, Accountability and Reporting in the Public Sector  
Academic studies of public sector accounting have seen enormous developments over the past three decades [9; 10; 11; 12]. A specific area of study is public sector accountability and related value, accounting and reporting. Accountability in the public sector is a complex concept with different dimensions [13; 14; 15]. The public sector with its multiple stakeholders requires an extensive range of accountability forms toward the value representation, unlike the private sector, and goes beyond the financial dimension, engaging with dimensions such as the political (or democratic), public, managerial, bureaucratic, professional and personal responsibility [15]. Public value theory is now a distinct paradigm from new public management and public governance, and it is considered a new way to conceive the public managers' role [16; 17; 18]. Public value discourse has led to the development of different conceptualizations: from public value as a way to contribute to the public sphere [19], to PV as what is added in terms of societal outcomes [20; 21], to public value as an actor-focus'strategic triangle' approach for public managers [22]. However, PV and its theorizing remain ambiguous. In contrast to academia's interest in PV theory, it has been noted that public value management and measurement is a long way from being translated into practice, within and across organizations [20; 21; 22; 23]. This may be due to the lack of rigorous empirical research aiming at a deeper understanding of the PV phenomenon, from which new insights and theory-building efforts could be developed [21; 22; 23; 24]. In this context, the term PV accounting implies a focus on the definition, justification and measurement of PV generated through the production of public services, from both a theoretical and practical point of view. Today, the public sector faces global and emerging problems such as climate change, sustainable economic development, modern slavery, tax avoidance, biodiversity and ecological accounts [12; 25; 26]. These issues have been identified as the guiding principles linking concerns for the environment and for the development of humanity [27]. Interdisciplinary accounting scholars should study how public sector accounting and accountability can respond to the challenges posed by the changing and increasing role of the immaterial public dimension [12], for example, using an alternative accountability mechanism such as Integrated reporting [28; 29; 30], which aims to disclose the value created over time (short, medium and long term). Integrated reporting provides the accountability processes and operational modes through which public interests and public value are decided, planned and represented in the space of common synthesis [31]. Scholars [32] have listed the seven contemporary challenges that public sector organizations face in terms of accountability and reporting. Each challenge embeds specific actions to embrace in terms of public value. The first challenge is represented by the traditional financial reporting [33], which provides a representation of the financial statements. For the public sector, with the advent of the organizational and managerial theories of new public management, a financial reporting model borrowed from the private sector has developed. Several countries have developed their accounting standards that define guidelines for the preparation of public budgets. The focus on just the traditional financial report should be supplemented by standards and reports on social benefits and public value [33] to avoid underrepresentation of the value and contribution of the public sector. The second challenge is represented by the management accounting that is at the basis of the performance management systems in the public sector, and that can link the budget to various output and result metrics [34].