Call for Paper 2026

Welcome to POMAA 2026!

The Public Management and Society Centre at the School of Public Administration is happy to announce the third Politics, Organizing, Management, Accounting and Auditing (POMAA) international research conference in Gothenburg, May 6-7, 2026 (lunch-to-lunch with a Ph.D. workshop the morning the 6th).

The purpose of the conference is to explore current themes and issues in the politics and organizing of the public sector, to provoke dialogue as well as facilitate critical assessment. The seminar aims to illuminate challenges and issues of the contemporary public sector from a variety of empirical, methodological, and theoretical perspectives.

The conference welcomes contributions on all aspects of public sector politics, organizing, management, accounting, and auditing in relation to current challenges and trends. Different theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches are welcomed and encouraged. The ambition is to attract scholars from a multitude of disciplines and facilitate a broad dialogue across different policy sectors (e.g. environment, education, migration, labor markets, security and healthcare). Potential themes for contributions include, but are not limited to:

• Contributions on overarching trends and challenges within governance and regulation; accounting and accountability issues; public management and organizing; policymaking and implementation; comparative politics and administration and multi-level governance.
• Thematic contributions on contemporary challenges include but are not limited to:
  • Street level organizations and bureaucrats in times of political transformation, public-private and civil society partnerships, and co-delivery of public services
  • Current management accounting and control challenges
  • Penal logics of the state: Techniques and instruments of public control and repression across policy fields
  • Financial resilience in an era of austerity
  • The politics and organizing in interlocking crises: Risk management, contingency, and prevention in and through public administration
  • Administering the climate crisis? Policy and implementation for green, just and safe transition, in the age of the Anthropocene
  • The accelerating pace of digitalization and proliferation of AI technology across the public sector
  • The endurance or erosion of professions in public service provision in turbulent times
  • Accounting and accountability in contemporary public sector organizations
    
    To indicate your interest in presenting at the conference, abstracts (300 words) should be sent to pomaa@spa.gu.se no later than the 20th of March 2026. This includes Ph.D. students who want to participate in the Ph.D. workshop. The submission deadline for complete papers for the conference and Ph.D. workshop is 22nd of April 2025.