Accountablity and ethnicity in a religious setting: the Salvation Army in France, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Sweden

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Accountablity and ethnicity in a religious
setting the Salvation Army in France,
Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Sweden

• Vassili JOANNIDES
• Supervised by Nicolas BERLAND and Trevor HOPPER
• July 1st 2009
• Université Paris Dauphine

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Research question

• How can everyday (religious) conduct reflect
  influences of ethnicity on accountability
  practices?

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Concepts (1/2)

• Conduct / practice (see Certeau, 1984)
• translation of ones values, beliefs and norms
  into the practice of everyday life
• Religion (see Eliade, 1951 Durkheim, 1898
  Weber, 1922)
• - an individual encounter with the Holy
• - a collective pattern of beliefs and values
• - shaped by norms issued and enforced by a
  clergy
• Ethnicity (see Eriksen, 1993 Banks, 1999
  Fenton, 1999 Weber, 1922)
• The subjective belonging to a community
• Based upon kinship, ancestry, language, inherited
  religious beliefs and practices, values and norms

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Concepts (2/2)

• Accountability see Roberts Scapens, 1985
  Ahrens, 1996 Law, 1996 Lévinas, 1985
• - a system whereby people are demanding and
  giving reasons for (daily) conduct
• - a discursive practice using a commonly agreed
  language, viz. Accounting, which is a visual
  representation of oneself in terms of
  assets/liabilities, debits/credits
• - a cascade of a Higher-Stakeholder
  approximations in the guise of evaluation and
  knowledge

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Knowledge debates addressed

• 1. On accountability as a cultural practice (as
  Hopwood, 1994 or Ahrens Chapman, 2007 Jeacle,
  2009 Jørgensen and Messner, 2009)
• 2. On accounting and accountability as a
  spirituality in churches (e.g. as Quattrone,
  2004, 2009 Karim Gambling, 1991)
• 3. On culture/ethnicity influencing accounting
  and accountability practices (as Efferin, 2002
  Efferin Hopper, 2007)

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Walk their walk, talk their talk and write their
story

• Full-time involvement in the Salvation Army as an
  ethnic and religious insider and social outsider.
• Data diary field notes, video and audio files
  (from services and other activities), internal
  documents, conversations / interviews, reflexive
  practices.
• Categories emerged from field observations

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Ethnicity in the Salvation Army

• France
• 1/3 Haitians (majority in one parish)
• 1/3 Congolese (alone in two parishes)
• 1/3 White French (same parish as Haitians and
  smaller town parishes)
• Switzerland German-Swiss (alone)
• United Kingdom
• 90 WASPs (alone)
• 10 Zimbabweans (alone in one parish)
• Sweden only Vikings (alone)

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The Salvation Army accountability system (1/2)

• A covenant-based accounting spirituality whereby
  people are expected to balance a formal God
  T-account

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The Salvation Army accountability system (2/2)
Debit (To God) Credit (From God)
Volunteering Employment Faithfulness
Social work Demonstrations before civil society Uniform wearing New souls New financial supports
Sunday donations Response to appeals Legacies Faithfulness
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Three styles of accountability
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Contributions

• Empirical
• ethnicity in the Salvation Army
• a church setting in non Anglo-Saxon contexts
• Theoretical
• a framework on accountability
• the sacred-secular approach is probably not
  appropriate to understand linkages between
  accounting and religion
• Ethnicity seems to be an appropriate
  concept/cultural unit to approach diversity in
  organisations and understand why conduct and
  (management/accounting/control) practices might
  vary

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(No Transcript)
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Accountability and controls
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Archival data
Data type Detailed archives
Ethnography Notes in diaries Services Other activities THQ meetings Social outsider experiences
Internal documents Reports on meetings Internal reports Orders and Regulations Guidelines Correspondance
Video / Audio files Services Outdoors activities (demonstrations, concerts) Private events (child consecration, mariage, funeral) Validation interviews
Various memos Informal conversations Opinion on people, activities, services
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Research design
Conclusions
Ontological assumptions / purposes
Epistemological stance (interdisciplinary perspectives)
Methodology choices
Contribution to scientific knowledge
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Research design
Sacred-secular / Hofstede Religious practice / ethnicity
Ontology Realist outsiders explain to draw universal and general laws Nominalist/idealist insiders understand accounting phenomena (within the church or ethnic community)
Interdisciplinary epistemology Reality is in peoples discourses understood through other disciplines than accounting Light positivism Reality is constructed in day-to-day life and can be understood through disciplines directed at these practices Light constructivism
Methodology choices Semi-structured interviews/ Questionnaires Ethnography / auto-ethnography
Scientific knowledge Homogeneous and comparable Scattered, heterogenesous and incomparable
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Accountability origins
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Witness

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vcm1a-SgLDcU
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vax6R9zobgyw
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vWr6SFLUtlcMfeature
  PlayListpCFDF6964E094F022playnext1playnext_f
  romPLindex27
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vDi054ksGWWM
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vST9dAxSKLtw