Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies

Digital Technologies and Governance Systems in the Majority World: Mobilising Accounting and Accountability for Sustainable Futures

Overview

As technological change continues to reshape governance systems, organisational practices and sustainable development pathways (Fähndrich, 2023; Flyverbom et al., 2019), accounting scholarship is increasingly called upon to engage with emerging digital phenomena and the multifaceted implications of digital transformation for accounting, auditing and accountability (Massaro et al., 2025). Digital platforms, artificial intelligence, fintech, environmental monitoring technologies, the metaverse and big data driven infrastructures are becoming deeply embedded in organisational governance and societal oversight. This underscores the need to problematise technologies as accounting objects, processes and sites of governance rather than as neutral tools with limited or easily observable consequences (Arnaboldi et al., 2017; Massaro et al., 2025). These technologies reconfigure how value is produced, measured and governed, while reshaping relationships among states, corporations, markets and society (Chakhovich and Virtanen, 2025; Fähndrich, 2023). In doing so, they transform decision making, organisational processes and power games, generating new forms of control and authority at the intersection of corporations, states and civil society (Arnaboldi et al., 2017; Flyverbom et al., 2019).

 

Besides, the expansion of digital technologies raises significant environmental and social concerns for sustainable futures, especially in the Majority World (Uddin, 2025), where governance systems for strong accountability are often constrained by fragile institutional arrangements (Moses and Hopper, 2022; Moses et al., 2024), as well as digital colonialism (Kwet, 2019), and coloniality (Bon et al., 2022). Organisational interest in technology use are increasingly reshaping accountability relations between sustainability and financial performance, blurring boundaries between different forms of accountability and complicating how accountability is constructed, enacted and assessed (Chakhovich and Virtanen, 2025; Moses et al., 2024). Moreover, the extraction of critical raw materials and the organisation of global supply chains frequently depend on precarious and, at times, coercive labour arrangements, while producing substantial ecological harm. These dynamics raise pressing questions of distributive justice, environmental degradation and whose interests are ultimately served by technology driven development.

 

Furthermore, the systematic extraction, aggregation and monetisation of digital traces foreground new forms of value creation and governance, positioning data as a central economic and political resource with profound implications for accounting and accountability (Flyverbom et al., 2019). These processes unfold within contexts marked by evolving state market relations, regulatory experimentation and institutional hybridity, where accounting plays a central role in shaping what becomes visible, measurable and actionable. Yet accounting systems may also reinforce dominant power structures and marginalise alternative values and voices.

 

This special issue seeks to advance understanding of how accounting and accountability are mobilised in response to technological expansion in the Majority World, and to examine the directions, interests and consequences of such mobilisation for inclusive, just and sustainable future.

 

Thematic areas

We invite high-quality multidisciplinary theoretical, empirical and methodological contributions that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Accounting and accountability in digital and technology enabled governance systems
• Socio-technical infrastructures and the reconfiguration of state and market relations
• Interactions between digital technologies, sustainability reporting, climate governance and environmental accountability in Majority World
• Accounting, datafication and platform-based regulation in the Majority World
• Artificial intelligence, fintech and the transformation of financial governance
• Digital technology enabled public sector reforms, “smart” governance and accountability practices
• Technology driven hybrid governance arrangements and institutional experimentation in comparative contexts, including Majority World and Western settings
• The role of accounting and accountability in mediating digital technological calibration, inequality and sustainability transitions
• Limits, tensions and unintended consequences of digital technology driven accounting and accountability practices
• Imperial control in digital architectures and accounting/accountability effects on sustainable futures
• [Re]invention of colonialism in the Majority world through digital technology domination, and its accounting/accountability consequences
• Digital technological accountability implications in professions and professional education in the Majority World, under Western accounting institutions and regulators

Contributions that engage explicitly or adopt comparative perspectives across the Majority World, are particularly encouraged.

 

References

Arnaboldi, M., Busco, C., & Cuganesan, S. (2017). Accounting, accountability, social media and big data: revolution or hype?. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 30(4), 762-776.

Bon, A. Dittoch, F., Lô, et al. (2022). Decolonizing Technology and Society: A Perspective from the Global South, in Werthner, H., Prem, E., Lee, E.A., & Ghezzi, C. Perspectives on Digital Humanism, Springer.

Chakhovich, T., & Virtanen, T. (2025). The role of the interest in technology use in blurring the lines between accountability for sustainability performance and for financial performance. Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, 21(7), 147-168.

Fähndrich, J. (2023). A literature review on the impact of digitalisation on management control. Journal of Management Control, 34(1), 9-65.

Flyverbom, M., Deibert, R., & Matten, D. (2019). The governance of digital technology, big data, and the internet: New roles and responsibilities for business. Business & Society, 58(1), 3-19.

Kwet, M. (2019). Digital colonialism: US empire and the new imperialism in the Global South. Race & Class, 60(4), 3-26.

Massaro, M., Spanò, R., & Kuruppu, S. C. (2025). Accountability and the metaverse: unaccounted digital worlds between techwashing mechanisms and new emerging meanings. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 38(3), 908-933.

Moses, O., Ehalaiye, D., Sorola, M., & Lassou, P. (2024). Extractive sector governance: does a nexus of accountability render local extractive industries transparency initiatives ineffective? Meditari Accountancy Research, 32(1), 176-206.

Moses, O., & Hopper, T. (2022). Accounting articles on developing countries in ranked English language journals: a meta-review. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 35(4), 1035-1060.

Uddin, S. (2025). Accounting Scholarship and the Majority World: A Case of Epistemic Injustice. The British Accounting Review, 101679.