Accountability and information disclosure in a Catholic charity (1798–1801)
研究1798-1801年间西班牙加的斯一家天主教慈善机构在无监管环境下的问责动机与信息披露行为，发现其向资助者和受助者披露信息，但因天主教秘密施舍教义和隐私保护而有所限制。
By examining a Spanish Catholic charity that operated in an unregulated environment in Cádiz between 1798 and 1801, this article analyses the motivations for discharging accountability to stakeholders and the factors that influence information disclosure. Drawing on stakeholder theory and not-for-profit accountability literature, we show how the organisation’s founders, managers and board members translated their feeling of responsibility and the accounting insight prevailing in their socio-economic context to this charity setting. Their efforts to discharge accountability and disclose information focused largely on upward stakeholders, but they also discharged accountability to aid recipients. Nevertheless, they restricted the information they revealed because of the Catholic doctrine about secret almsgiving and concerns about the protection of poor people’s privacy and fear of public shame. These restrictions may have been somewhat counterbalanced by the charity’s observable actions and by social interaction among board members, donors, and beneficiaries enabled through physical proximity and social ties.