Co-construction of performance indicators for a circular city and its relation to a local action net
Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal
ISSN: 0951-3574
Article publication date: 13 June 2023
Abstract
Purpose
This study examines how circular economy (CE) performance indicators are constructed in an urban context characterised by a multitude of conflicting interests and visions of urban development. It explores the process of constructing a shared consensus about the performance indicators in conditions of low contractibility, where intervention objectives and outcomes are not easily quantifiable because the object is ambiguous and cannot be fully specified in advance.
Design/methodology/approach
The construction of performance indicators at the urban level is examined through the lens of an action net. Using group interviews, observations and documentary analysis, this study investigates the case of a CE initiative in the city of Milan.
Findings
The study demonstrates that in cases of low contractibility, the development of CE solutions requires actions that span across organisational boundaries, organised in an action net. As the action net unfolds, it is closely knotted with the construction of performance indicators, indicating a co-constitutive relationship between the two processes.
Originality/value
This interdisciplinary study contributes to the public sector accounting literature by exploring the complexity of performance indicator construction at the urban level. It further recognises performance measurement in cities as a dynamic and flexible process, in which the interconnected actions and involvement of multiple actants shape the composition of the indicators.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the valuable comments and guidance from the two anonymous AAAJ reviewers, the editors of AAAJ and the guest editors of the special issue “Accounting for the Circular Economy within Cities”. The authors are also grateful to the participants of the 13th EIASM Conference on New Directions in Management Accounting (Lisbon, December 2022), the EAA 38th Doctoral Colloquium in Accounting (Bergen, May 2022) and the various seminars where this article was presented (Copenhagen Business School, Denmark; University of Innsbruck, Austria; University of Burgos, Spain). In particular, the authors wish to thank Carlos Larrinaga (University of Burgos), Ericka Costa (the University of Trento), Giuseppe Grossi (Kristianstad University) and Evgenii Aleksandrov (Nord University) for the comments on previous drafts of this article. This publication is based on the work conducted during the European project REFLOW in the Horizon 2020 framework. The authors wish to express gratitude for the support of the European Commission under grant agreement No. 820937 and for the contributions of all partners of this project.
Citation
Bekier, J. and Parisi, C. (2023), "Co-construction of performance indicators for a circular city and its relation to a local action net", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-07-2022-5911
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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