Introduction

Abstract

I am very pleased to introduce this 18th issue of the International Accounting Policy Forum (IAPF) – the annual special issue of Accounting and Business Research. Bringing together practitioners and academic researchers continues to be an important purpose of the Forum and the related ICAEW events. The diversity of academic disciplines and the breadth of practitioner experience seen in this year’s issue are particularly striking. The four academic papers that follow are based on presentations at the December 2022 Information for Better Markets conference on The COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons for the Theory and Practice of Accounting. One legacy of the global pandemic has been that for the third year running, the conference was held exclusively online and reached academics and practitioners from all around the world. In January 2020, the World Health Organisation declared a ‘public health emergency of international concern’ in response to the rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus. The end of the emergency was only declared in May 2023, by which time some seven million deaths had been reported. The virus created not only a health emergency but also an economic emergency as lockdowns prompted a sudden and protracted worldwide economic downturn. The scale and longevity of the pandemic created real concerns, but also some hopes that the societal and economic consequences would be profound and lasting. Early in 2021, when ICAEW began planning the 2022 Information for Better Markets conference, we saw that it could provide an opportunity to explore how the economic shock of COVID-19 had affected the accountancy profession as well as accounting information flows, for example in businesses, financial markets, and tax systems. Recognising that the effects of the pandemic would be studied for many years to come, we asked the academic contributors to the conference to take stock of existing literature on resilience, adaptability, and crisis management, as well as early COVID-specific research, both to draw insights about how things might be done differently in the future, and to identify areas for further research. In the first paper, ‘Accounting for resilience: the role of the accounting profession in promoting resilience’, Layla Branicki, Stephen Brammer, Martina Linnenluecke and David Houghton note that the rising incidence, variety, and severity of extreme events have led to a growing body of research and practice concerned with promoting resilience. The authors provide a