This article describes the accountability features of confraternities in Verona during the Long Seventeenth Century. These charities, driven by a common and deep Christian spirit, played a pivotal role in a period of great depression, helping the local community. The accounts relating to their activities display precision and are rich in analytical detail, enabling the painting of a portrait of Verona’s confraternities and their economic and charitable actions as strictly bound by a spiritual aim. Using the stakeholder theory lens to analyse the archival documents of the 53 confraternities revealed by the Appraisal Book of 1682, this article highlights a complex network of relationships among these organisations and their stakeholders in light of their power, legitimacy and urgency attributes. We conclude that these confraternities’ accountability was the result of the most powerful stakeholders’ influence, and underlines confraternities’ pivotal role in supporting the poor in the local community and encouraging the salvation of souls, supporting their entrance into heaven
The relation between accounting and power in religious institutions has received little attention from accounting historians. The present article therefore studies the case of the Santa Maria della Scala monastery in Verona (Italy) during the Middle Ages to explore whether and how accounting might support the domination structure and facilitate power relations within the organisation. A documentary analysis of primary and secondary sources confirms that accounting played a key role in reinforcing both hierarchical and horizontal power relations among friars.
Purpose: This paper aims to analyse the dynamic use of the balanced scorecard (BSC) in an Italian public hospital.Design/Methodology/Approach: A longitudinal case study was conducted at an Italian public teaching hospital over a period of 5 years. The emergence of dynamic use of BSC was traced over a different combination of social, political, economic and organizational realities. A deeper understanding of these realities requires the adoption of a holistic approach to BSC use. Henri's types of system use (i.e., monitoring, attention focussing, strategic decision-making and legitimizing) frame this approach in a more concrete manner.Findings: This study adds to the debate on whether BSC is used for aspects other than monitoring in public contexts.The case study offers the first example of a legitimizing use of the system and a first longitudinal case study that traces a dynamic use of BSC: the use evolves from monitoring and attention focussing to monitoring and legitimization. Norms, political parties and top managers play a determining role in this process.
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