Organizations today face converging challenges from climate change, biodiversity loss, geopolitical instability, and rising sustainability pressures. Rapid developments in digitalization and artificial intelligence intensify these issues. Collectively, they create significant uncertainties about future conditions and about the strength of the knowledge on which organizations must rely. As a result, organizations need robust management, accounting, and control infrastructures to navigate this shifting landscape.

To maintain legitimacy and competitiveness, organizational responses must be grounded in science, supported by evidence, and transparently communicated to relevant decision-makers and stakeholders. However, it remains unclear whether current approaches are sufficient. Many organizations struggle to translate planetary realities into practical structures, systems, and routines. Large gaps remain in how sustainability information is defined, measured, communicated, and assured within governance structures. The landscape of biodiversity reporting standards (e.g., ESRS, GRI, TCFD, TNFD) is also fragmented. Although technological innovations are beginning to influence these areas, their use is uneven, their dynamics are opaque, and their effects remain uncertain.

These factors highlight the need for sustained scholarly attention to how organizations develop science- and evidence-based, transparent, and resilient approaches to management, accounting, control, and decision-making under rapidly changing environmental, societal, and technological conditions. For scholars, this raises core questions about risk, transparency, accountability, materiality, and the assumptions underlying governance, reporting and control.

This symposium brings together scholars working at the intersection of sustainability and digitalization to examine how planetary and technological shifts reshape management, accounting, control, and decision-making. The session will include short presentations from four panelists with conceptual, empirical, and methodological expertise, followed by a moderated discussion that will focus on: (1) sustainability-focused measurement, reporting, and management control; (2) the role of AI and digital infrastructures in sustainability monitoring and reporting; and (3) the implications of evolving governance frameworks (e.g., CSRD, ESRS, TNFD).

The overarching objective is to identify emerging research pathways, stimulate collaborative inquiry, and contribute to the development of tools and infrastructures to support decision-making and navigate planetary risks. Our ambition is to connect ongoing research, highlight areas where knowledge remains limited, and strengthen the scholarly community working at this critical intersection.

Panel:
(1) Dr. Mario Abela (Bain & Co.)
(2) Dr. Niak Sian Koh (Oxford University, IPBES)
(3) Dr. Einar Iveroth (Uppsala University)
(4) Dr. Mikko Ranta (Jönköping University)