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The purpose of this paper is to examine prominent issues and contributions from extant research and explore the literature on the services provided by Knowledge-Intensive Public Organizations (KIPOs) and its pursuit to achieve the United Nations (UN) 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (hereafter referred to as the UN 2030 SDGs agenda) amidst the challenges represented by COVID-19 pandemic. It emphasizes the crucial role of accounting in dealing with techniques and social and moral practices concerned with the sustainable utilization of resources. This paper also provides an overview of the other papers presented in this JPBAFM Special Issue and draws from their findings to scope out future impactful research opportunities in this area.

The design consists of a review and examination of the prior relevant literature and the other papers published in this JPBAFM Special Issue.

The paper identifies and summarizes three key research themes in the extant literature: the growth in the types of KIPO; the rise in the research approaches to study the provision of public services by KIPO in pursuit of the UN 2030 SDG agenda and the consequent call for developments in the accounting field; and unintended consequences during COVID-19 pandemic. It draws upon work within these research themes to set out four broad areas for future impactful research.

The value of this paper rests with collating and synthesizing several important research themes on the nature and unintended consequences of the UN 2030 SDG agenda, and the challenges represented by COVID-19 pandemic in the governance, management and accounting for KIPO and in prompting future extensions of this work through setting out areas for further innovative research within the field.

The research examined in this paper and the future research avenues proposed are highly relevant to the health sector, the judiciary, museums, research centers and the UN. The focus on accounting and accountability towards a broader spectrum of stakeholders calls for new avenues of study in the accounting field. They also offer important insights into matters of management, accounting, accountability, sustainability accounting and control more generally.

The research examined in this paper and the future research avenues proposed are highly relevant to the health sector, the judiciary, museums, universities, research centers and the UN. They also offer important insights into matters of management, accounting, accountability, sustainability accounting and control more generally.

This paper adds to vibrant existing streams of research in the area of KIPO by bringing together authors from different areas of accounting research for this JPBAFM Special Issue. In scoping out an agenda for impactful research approaches used to study the provision of public services by KIPO, this paper also draws attention to underexplored issues pertaining to extents such as the “lived experience” of personnel in the KIPO and envisioning what a future system of governance, management and accounting of SDG might look like.

This research explores how contextual elements and significant events influence the changing storylines within a company's directors' reports spanning a period of six decades. These elements and events encompass the internal dynamics of the family that owns the company, industry-specific advancements, political and socioeconomic climates, and explicit guidelines related to corporate reporting.

This research employs a case study methodology to analyse the directors' reports of Barilla, a prominent Italian food manufacturer, within the theoretical framework of historical institutionalism. A systematic content analysis is conducted on sixty directors' reports published between 1961 and 2021. The study also identifies and examines significant contextual events within this six-decade period, which are linked to four key institutional factors.

Based on the research findings, the directors' reports exhibited notable fluctuations throughout the studied timeframe in reaction to shifts in the institutional setting. Our investigation highlights that each institutional element experienced crucial pivotal moments, and given their interconnected nature, modifications in one factor impacted the others. It was noted that these pivotal moments resulted in alterations in the directors' reports' content across various thematic areas. Additionally, despite Barilla being a multinational company, it was found that national events within Italy had a more pronounced influence on the evolving narratives than global events.

Previous research on directors' reports or chairman's statements has primarily focused on the influence of macro-level institutional factors on the narratives. In contrast, our study considers both macro-level and micro-level institutions, specifically examining the internal events within a family business and how they shape the content of directors' reports. Our study is also distinctive in its analysis of specific critical junctures and their interactions with the investigated institutional factors. Additionally, to the best of our knowledge, few existing studies span a timeframe of sixty years, particularly concerning an Italian company.