Managed Transparency as Platform-Era Decoupling in Internet Philanthropy: Evidence From China
基于中国六个田野点的90次深度访谈，研究提出“管理透明度”概念，揭示数字慈善平台如何通过格式化、节奏化和路由化三种实践，使组织在展示开放性的同时控制问责，导致仪式性合规、选择性披露等脱钩后果。
Digital philanthropy platforms are widely expected to enhance accountability by making charitable activities publicly traceable. Yet in China’s internet philanthropy, platform visibility yields uneven accountability consequences. Drawing on 90 in-depth interviews across six field sites (Chongqing, Guizhou, Shanghai, Qinghai, Hainan, and Taiwan as a relationally comparable contrast), this study advances a decoupling account of transparency reform under platformized visibility. I introduce managed transparency to describe how organizations manage the production of traceability through three practices—formatting, pacing, and routing—so that openness is demonstrable while accountability remains manageable across audiences. Across sites, platform tools such as dashboards, rankings, and donation logs are rarely rejected; instead, they are integrated into routines that standardize disclosure, calibrate update rhythms, and coordinate where scrutiny and interpretation are handled. These practices generate recognizable decoupling outcomes, including ceremonial conformity, symbolic compliance, selective disclosure, and paper compliance, reorganized around digital interfaces where visibility itself becomes an object of organizational management. The study contributes to business and society research by specifying a platform-era mechanism of decoupling and by offering diagnostic implications for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting, and other forms of platform-mediated accountability.