Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a picture of the state of the art in social and environmental accounting research applied to the public sector, highlighting different streams and the main gaps in current literature and providing input for future research.Design/methodology/approach: A bibliometric method was used to analyse the characteristics, citation patterns and content of 38 papers published in international academic journals.Findings: The findings show that the research on social and environmental reporting in the public sector is still at an early stage. Current investigations, although slowly on the increase, are still very few and localised. Most papers are about the reasons why public organisations report, what and how they report, but there are so many aspects that need to be investigated more in-depth or require extra validation in order to open new directions for future research, among which the relationship with and the differences between other non-financial type of reporting, namely ICR and IR.Research limitations/implications: The study shows some limitations, mainly related to the adoption of the bibliometric method. Indeed, it does not take into account books and chapters but only papers published in international and academic journals. This leads to exclude a significant part of the existing literature and other relevant contributions on the field.Originality/value: Social and environmental reporting practices are quickly spreading in the public sector. The field is particularly interesting, given the specific connotations of this kind of organisations. However, the literature is clearly not exhaustive and there is not a comprehensive and systematic review of the state of the art on the subject.

Purpose: This article has two main aims. First, to observe the different causes of public (dis)value. Second, to explore, through a case study, an example of public value regeneration through the social reuse of assets seized from criminal organizations. Design/methodology/approach: This is a theoretical article with a case study, utilizing semi-structured interviews. Findings: The study analyzes the factors resulting from the regeneration of new public value within an initially compromised context. This is achieved by ‘freeing’ and converting properties seized from the Mafia in public goods available to the community (Plus-Value). The article finds that the different causes of public (dis)value are Mafia infiltration in public goods, corruption, tax evasion, abstaining from voting, (ab)use of power and (ab)use of law. Practical implications: The study may help both scholars and practitioners to identify strategies to offset (dis)value factors, something that would be easy to imagine as having managerial implications. Social implications: The value regenerated with respect to properties confiscated from the Mafia and then converted to social activities for the community highlights how it is possible to transform public (dis)value to public value. Originality/value: The article explores a little examined area of public value, that is the destruction of value or (dis)value.

Despite a general awareness of the potential of big data in terms of public interest, several obstacles prevent their effective sharing. This study, linking the discourse on data to the concepts of data value and accountability, aims at emancipating the scientific debate from the emphasis on administrative transparency and the protection of privacy, tracing new perspectives for future research. The present research examines the main peer-reviewed articles published by journals that have dealt with data value and accountability across the public and private dimensions. The bibliometric analysis carried out indicates a propensity by current literature to consider the issue of data value creation either only in the private (data as input to improve business performance or customer relations) or in the public dimension (open data government models). This means that research on behavioral data for public governance has so far been underestimated. Evidence shows that big data value creation is closely associated with a collective process where multiple levels of interaction and data sharing develop among private and public actors in a multilayered accountability environment.