Binding the present and orchestrating the future: accounting as a technology of government in water sustainability

Purpose The paper explains how water sustainability becomes governable in fragmented hybrid settings. It shows how accounting and accountability hold together diverse actors, competing obligations and different rationalities, enabling sustainability aspirations to translate into coordinated action. The paper illuminates the fragile character of this process, showing how accounting and accountability partially stabilise tensions without resolving them. Design/methodology/approach The study adopts an interpretive case study of an Italian water utility undergoing regulatory and organisational changes. It applies Dean's analytics of government framework to analyse data from interviews, sustainability reports and publicly available documents. Findings The study identifies four regimes of practice through which water sustainability was rendered governable. Across these regimes, accounting and accountability perform “binding” and “orchestrating” roles in governing water sustainability. These practices establish norms, responsibilities and incentives (binding) and align actors and activities (orchestrating), thereby stabilising but not resolving inter-regime tensions. Practical implications The study helps multiple actors, such as managers, policymakers and stakeholders, to understand how accounting and accountability can support the organisation of collective responsibility for water sustainability. Social implications The study shows how accounting and accountability redistribute responsibility for water sustainability across organisations and communities in hybrid public–private settings. In doing so, they can promote collective responsibility for water conservation but may also normalise particular ways of valuing water. Originality/value The paper introduces the concepts of binding and orchestrating to explain how accounting and accountability render sustainability governable in fragmented hybrid settings. Its value lies in showing how accounting enables collective action while leaving unresolved tensions among economic, public-service and environmental commitments visible.