Accountability in collaborative settings: understanding inter-corporate sustainability initiatives

As corporations have come to recognise their role in shaping the biosphere, there has been an increase in inter-corporate cooperation, whereby corporations come together to address issues of common concern. The rationale for developing a collective approach arises from a realisation that “wicked” problems are beyond the capacity of any one organisation to tackle. At the same time, although inter-corporate collaborations exist in the practice landscape, little is known about their characteristics from an academic perspective. Moreover, these initiatives raise questions in terms of how collective performance might be communicated, thereby creating the possibility for accountability to be discharged. This paper seeks to understand how inter-corporate sustainability initiatives (hereafter ISIs) have been explored in the literature by using a systematic literature review (SLR) of 203 academic papers and explores how these aspects can be integrated to start the process of developing an understanding of potential accountability mechanisms for ISIs. The paper contributes to accounting literature by emphasising the likely relevance of different ISI configurations in designing appropriate accountability approaches. It expands existing discussions around accountability-based accounting systems and highlights the importance of considering a variety of factors, including the governance approach, nature of collaboration, and ISI mechanisms and attributes, in informing accountability measures. The SLR suggests that certain aspects, such as leadership, trust, legitimacy, and outcomes, are critical in understanding ISIs and influence our ability to imagine how accountability could be sought for collective outcomes as well as participant achievements.