From secrecy to transparency: Accounting and the transition from religious charity to publicly-owned hospital

Geraldine Robbins and Irvine Lapsley

The British Accounting Review, 2015, vol. 47, issue 1, 19-32

Abstract: This paper examines the experiences of a publicly owned hospital which had formerly been part of a religious order of nuns. This paper presents novel findings to extend our understanding of the emergent theory of transparency in the public sector. The literature on secrecy and transparency is drawn upon to inform a case study investigation of the use of accounting under both forms of ownership. This reveals both the continuing influence of this hospital's prior existence and the difficulties of adapting to public ownership. The findings reveal the tensions of the change from secretive religious organisation and history of parsimony to current public sector organisation. The end state of public sector ownership brings its own difficulties, with accounting systems failing to achieve the aim of transparency.

Keywords: Charity; Religious secrecy; Public ownership; Transparency; Health care (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0890838914000717
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:bracre:v:47:y:2015:i:1:p:19-32

DOI: 10.1016/j.bar.2014.10.008

Access Statistics for this article

The British Accounting Review is currently edited by Nathan Lael Joseph and Alan Lowe

More articles in The British Accounting Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().