Introduction to the Handbook: multidisciplinary perspectives on accountability

The Oxford Handbook of Public Accountability (Bovens et al., 2014) was published more than ten years ago. It was recently followed by a Handbook of Accounting, Accountability and Governance (Carnegie & Napier, 2023). Does then the present Handbook of Accountability Research: Politics, Law, Business, Work have a reason for being? Our answer is yes, because each of these handbooks are different from one another. The 2014 volume essentially gathered public administration scholars and political scientists as contributors. The contributors to the 2023 volume are financial accounting and corporate management specialists. The present volume is unique in the multidisciplinary composition of its authorship and its unprecedented breadth: its four sections cover the topic of accountability from the perspectives of political science and public administration, legal science, auditing and corporate governance, and human resource management studies, each edited by an expert in the respective area. Hence, this Handbook brings together in the twenty chapters that follow an international and truly diverse set of more than thirty leading experts from multiple disciplinary perspectives, each of whom has significantly contributed to the area that they write about. We therefore believe this volume is the ideal companion to a broad, multidisciplinary and international readership who wishes to gain an overview of the core issues related to accountability, to learn about the most important theoretical developments, debates and recent trends, and to receive suggestions for relevant further reading and research avenues.