Track Description
Public administrations and hybrid organizations are increasingly expected to confront complex environmental and social challenges – climate change, biodiversity loss, circularity, and equity – while ensuring financial resilience and public value creation. Yet the integration of sustainability into public management, accounting, and finance is uneven, ranging from symbolic reporting to substantive institutional reforms. This track seeks to stimulate interdisciplinary debate by combining theoretical approaches with practical instruments and standards, offering a comprehensive perspective on the future of sustainability in the public sector. In this scenario, the transition toward a Circular Economy (CE) represents a paradigm shift in how societies organize production, consumption, and resource management. While the private sector has been the primary focus of scholarly and policy debates, public sector organizations (PSOs) are increasingly recognized as pivotal actors in driving circular transformation. Their dual role as regulators and largest economic agents makes them critical players within this transition, setting regulatory frameworks, shaping market incentives, and modeling sustainable practices.

This track aims to advance academic debate on how PSOs tackle environmental and social challenges and how current practices are reshaping governance, performance measurement, and value creation in the public domain.
It calls for contributions that explore the evolving role of PSOs as regulators, economic actors, and model of sustainable strategies and circular practices. Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

• Organizational and Community Learning: How do learning processes, training, and communities of practice foster circular innovation in PSOs?
• Circular Public Procurement and Accounting: How do PSOs measure and account for circular value creation?
• Governance and Organizational Change: What forms of governance enable circular transitions in public administration?
• Technology and Transparency: What is the role of digital tools – such as Blockchain technology – in enhancing accountability, traceability, and citizen engagement in circular governance?
• Comparative and Contextual Analyses: How do national and local contexts, regulatory frameworks, and cultural settings shape circular strategies and outcomes?
• Social Integration and Wellbeing: How can the CE be leveraged as a tool for social value creation and wellbeing outcomes?
• Measurement: How can PSOs design robust performance frameworks that capture environmental and social impacts while addressing potential rebound effects?

We particularly encourage interdisciplinary submissions, as well as both conceptual and empirical studies,
adopting quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods