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Perceptions of
Religious spirit and peoples accountability
perceptions of accountability
in Hindu and Buddhist religious
997
organizations
Received July 2007
Kelum Jayasinghe Revised 15 August 2008
School of Accounting, Finance and Management, University of Essex, Accepted 14 January 2009
Colchester, UK, and
Teerooven Soobaroyen
School of Business and Management, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how the Buddhist and Hindu people in
non-Western societies perceive rational accountability practices in religious organizations, through
their respective religious spirit and beliefs and in combination with broader structural elements of
the society.
Design/methodology/approach The interpretive tradition of research, i.e. ethnography based on
two in-depth cases from Sri Lanka (a Buddhist temple) and Mauritius (a Hindu temple) is adopted for
the data collection. The data are analysed using grounded theory methods and procedures.
Findings In non-Western Buddhist and Hindu societies where peoples lives are bound by a high
religious spirit the accountability system in the religious organisations is largely visible as an
informal and social practice rather than a stakeholder-oriented rational mechanism. It is found that the
rational accountability mechanisms are sacredised by the Buddhist and Hindu religious spirit and
subsequently, the accountability systems and religious activities are both influenced by the structural
elements of trust, aspirations, patronage and loyalty relations, social status, power and rivalries.
The accountability practices implemented in these organisations are perceived by the people as being
no more than ceremonial rituals aimed at strengthening the temples righteous and prudent image to
the religious society.
Research limitations/implications The paper raises the issue that accountability practices in
community, grassroots-based non-profit organisations are not mere reporting of facts relating to
economic activities and a neutral system giving reasons for the conduct of its leaders. Instead, they
initiate new forms of accountability systems and reproduce structural conditions.
Originality/value This is one of the first field studies which examine perceptions of accountability
within a Hindu and a Buddhist context, as influenced by the religious spirit and internal belief
systems of the devotees. Previous studies have mostly focused on Judeo-Christian or Islamic
denominations.
Keywords Management accountability, Religion, Society, Sri Lanka, Mauritius
Paper type Research paper
This tension is addressed many times in Hindu scriptures and is popularly depicted in
the Bhagavad Gita, as a conversation between Krishna (a Hindu deity) and Arjuna
(a Hindu Prince). Confronted with a desire not to act and uphold social order (Dharma),
Arjuna seeks to renounce society to achieve liberation (Moksha). Krishna advises
Arjuna that complete inaction is impossible and that the key to liberation is not by
refusing to act but by performing any action with the proper understanding, attitude or
knowledge. In other words, according to Kinsley (1982, p. 33), the ideal is to act without
concern for the fruits of actions, to renounce ones egotistical desires in all of ones
doings and to plays one role without concern for personal consequences referred to
as the process of disciplined action (Karma-Yoga). Hence, what a Hindu does is as
important as what he or she believes in and the adherence to Dharma is not merely
limited to a passive acceptance of certain beliefs but greatly associated to the active
performance of duties and rituals, participating in festivals and other worshipping
events, such as Maha Shivaratri[6], Diwali[7] and Sankranti[8].
Both Buddhist and Hindu people believe their religious teachings are philosophical
(e.g. teachings from Buddha and the Vedas) and reforming, and consider these as the
training for social existence in the present and in the life to come. For both
denominations, there is no central theological elite or ecclesiastical authority that all
Hindus (Bowrin, 2004; Lorenzen, 1999) or Buddhists can draw upon (Snodgrass, 2007).
AAAJ As a result, there is much tolerance towards incorporating other cults and regional
22,7 folklore, which then leads to the development of many variants of Hinduism and
Buddhism at grassroots level (Ashby, 1974; Radhakrishnan, 1990). There are however
key differences between these two belief systems. For instance, reverence to the sacred
texts (Vedas and Upanishads) is a prerequisite for any belief system to be considered
Hindu whilst Buddhism does not assign a divine authority to the Vedic texts. Then,
1004 in contrast to Hinduism, Buddhism is silent about the existence or non-existence of
God. Alternatively, Buddhism offers Dhamma or the impersonal law in place of God.
In addition, the role of the Brahmin (priestly) caste is viewed as central in orthodox
Hinduism and in a caste-based society but the so-called superior status of the Brahmin
is not explicitly recognised in Buddhism[9] (Kinsley, 1982; Smith, 1987). Instead,
Buddhism rejects the caste based society and divorces itself from the interests of the
ruling stratum. Finally, the concept of Dharma in Hinduism explicitly encompasses
social obligations (e.g. earning material wealth and providing for society, known as
Artha) whilst this is viewed more philosophically in Buddhism, namely in terms of
engaging oneself in the right conduct to escape from the sufferings of worldly life
(known as Nirvana). According to Buddhas teachings, a person can achieve Nirvana
through the Five Noble Truths (realisation of the essence of suffering) and Eightfold
Path (methods of removing all suffering). Buddhism encourages a middle way of life
and rejects extreme asceticism as well as great wealth. In contrast, Hinduism does
accept the states of extreme asceticism and of great wealth, as part of the different
stages of life where one, respectively, pursues Moksha and Dharma.
In our assessment through our participation in the practical life of these two
communities, we found that these Buddhist and Hindu communities both have a long
historically constructed socio-religious set of beliefs and practices for their everyday
life (internal history as referred to by Niebuhr (1951) and Hardy and Ballis (2005)).
They both believe in predestination and reincarnation. Since, ones posterity depends
upon ones behaviour in his/her previous soul (Karma), they earn good (Pin in
Sinhala) for the benefit of their next life (reincarnation) by having a decent present life.
This religious spirit among Buddhist and Hindu people has set strong moral rules
for committing religious as well as social and economic actions. Hence, the spirit in
which they undertake their social and economic activities is closely tied to their
religious belief systems, i.e. living a righteous life. They feel no great tension between
temple and society, and understand the culture and economy through religion and
religion through culture and economy (Hardy and Ballis, 2005; Niebuhr, 1951). Thus, to
a great extent, the economic activities of these societies are sacredised, e.g. before
commencing work, the Buddhist Priest engages into Pirith chanting as a way to bless
the new work. On the other hand, because of the middle-class dominance and
protestant-influenced values, religious activities are ceremonially secularised to
signal their congruence with social and economic expectations, e.g. budgeting
practices, annual reports approval at annual general meetings (AGM).
One needs to be also appreciative of the fact that Hindu and Buddhist religious
practices appear to be much interdependent with the people who live their lives and
spiritualities by the Hindu or Buddhist creed. This thus leads us to question how Hindu
or Buddhist people play a crucial role in the understanding, interpretation and
re-interpretation of their religious beliefs, taking into account the other specificities
of the cultural and political economic context in which they live. Consequently,
ones understanding of accounting and accountability in a Hindu or Buddhist setting Perceptions of
cannot be divorced from the broader societal context particularly in the case of accountability
Hinduism which explicitly involves itself in the structuring of the society. Indeed,
this may explain why many authors understand Hinduism and Buddhism as a way of
life rather than a religion (Ross, 1980; Klostermaier, 1994; Dutta-Bergman and Doyle,
2001). This is why we sought to interpretively examine these belief systems in different
contexts in a bid to develop a richer understanding of accountability not strictly 1005
vis-a`-vis the religious beliefs but also in the presence of the context in which
accounting, accountability and religion is practiced. In the next section, we explain our
methodology.
4. Methodology
The study adopts the interpretive tradition of research, i.e. ethnography method
(Clifford and Marcus, 1986; Geertz, 1988) to study accountability practices in its social
context. Ethnography analyses how actors choose to do what they do, and particularly
focus on the orderly patterned nature of actors everyday social practices (Jonsson and
Macintosh, 1997; Dey, 2002). To examine how accountability practices of religious
organisations are perceived by their people in a non-Western context, this study has
selected a Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka and a Hindu temple in Mauritius. These two
cases studies in two relatively different general contexts provided us with a mirror to
understand how people with alternative religious spirits perceive accountability
differently. The data were collected through participant observation and in-depth
interviews. Representatives of both temples were initially contacted as the first step of
the interpretive research process. Upon further discussions, the people involved with
the two religious organisations agreed to informal and in-depth conversations on the
religious spirit and the accountability issues. We have been involved in the past with
the temples and have known several devotees and Priests. Our past experiences of
living as insiders with these two communities for many years allowed us to internalise
easily into their social life and to naturally get in get on and get out during
the fieldwork. In total, 15 and ten interviews were carried out and transcribed at the
Buddhist and Hindu temple, respectively. We interviewed them for approximately one
hour in their native languages. These interviews were held with different
office-bearers, elected committee members and religious figures of the two
organisations operating the temples, i.e. two Chief Priests, two chairman, two
Treasurers, two secretaries, four local delegates, six lay members and seven devotees).
It is noted that none of the interviewees have had any formal training in accounting
and financial activities but have been active in these religious organizations (in various
capacities) over the last five to ten years. In addition, documentary evidence was made
available in relation to the organizations structures and extent of administrative,
accounting and accountability practices.
We conducted the interviews in the form of guided conversations (MacNeill, 1990),
whereby the interviewee pursued topics and raised the themes of interest within
certain broad areas as prompted by the interviewer. The areas covered included
background information on respondents, their attachments, roles and tasks both in
society and religious organisation, their expectations from local religious organisation
and Priests, and their perceptions about financial practices of local religious
organisation. During the interviews, detailed conversations on specific topics were
AAAJ carried out and our reflexive accounts were noted carefully. The verbal data gathered
22,7 from the interviews were compared with the available documentary evidence to check
their contextual validity and procedural reliability. As part of this validation process,
some participative observations were also made to critically understand more
contextual issues, and enriching particularities of peoples viewpoints and perspectives
of the religious spirit and accountability (Gregory and Altman, 1989). This technique
1006 was employed specifically at religious events and rituals, e.g. pujas and the
administrative functions of the temples, e.g. committee meetings.
The ethnographic data from the fieldwork and documentary evidence were
analyzed using grounded theory methods and procedures (Strauss and Corbin, 1990).
For the content analysis of its modes of thought and modes of action (Jacobson,
1991), the data were provisionally categorized through line by line and paragraph level.
The inspection is conducted for the purpose of natural data grouping (Morrow and
Brown, 1994). The ethnographic narratives are formed from the interview transcripts
and meta-stories were constructed by signifying, editing and reshaping the narratives
(Llewellyn, 1999). By doing so, we attempt to make connections between the differing
contributions of research subjects to identify key themes and to theorise the empirical
findings.
5. Context
This section provides a brief picture of the religious organizational context in Sri Lanka
and Mauritius, with a particular interest to their culture, politics and administration.
Also, it presents an overview of the two local organisations selected for the study.
Figure 1.
Religious spirit and Social status, power
peoples perceptions of and rivalries
accountability
Our findings imply that the religious spirit is an integral and important part of
accountability in non-Western societies. Their structural elements are being influenced
by the religion and the historically constructed religious spirit of their people. The
religiosity among Buddhist and Hindu people in our study is dominated by the high
religious spirit to engage in actions. The case data repeatedly showed that these
indigenous people do not mind the distinctions between religion and society and do not
face any sacred/secular tensions as the temple communities accept and respect the
holiness of Buddha and Hindu deities. The Hindu and Buddhist religious spirit as
perceived by the people, is seen as not being in conflict with formal accountability
systems and the inherent representations of money and wealth. There is neither
a reliance on the functionalities of formal accountability mechanisms as part of a
theology of integration between the physical and spiritual (Jacobs and Walker, 2004),
nor is there an explicit and conscious intertwining of religious values and financial
practice (Kreander et al., 2004). In addition, there is not also a single world view as
documented in Islamic organizations (Abdul-Rahman and Goddard, 1998). In their
temples, the Hindu and Buddhist people elevate societal values while simultaneously
adopting their religious beliefs and moral values to rationalise their social actions.
They understand the culture and economy through religion and religion through
culture and economy. Thus, to great extent, the social and economic activities of these
societies are sacredised and their religious activities are ceremonially secularised.
What they value most is the religious spirit behind the peoples actions. From this
perspective, we found that the accountability practices implemented in their religious
organisations are perceived by the people as being ceremonial rituals aimed at
strengthening the temples righteous and prudent image to the religious society. Hence,
we do find different conceptualisations of accountability as a result of different
denominations (Irvine, 2005) but we also find that the practices of Hinduism and
Buddhism are inherently quite diverse and are rooted in the social context, principally
due to the absence of central ecclesiastical elites. This is in sharp contrast to previous
Judeo-Christian accountability studies where religious organization is strongly and
hierarchically controlled. On the other hand, Hindu and Buddhist lay people live
by and re-interpret their religion as a way of life and this study therefore contributes Perceptions of
to the literature by showing a different facet of the links between religion, accounting accountability
and accountability.
The findings also assert that in non-Western Buddhist and Hindu societies
consisting of people bounded on high religious spirit and structural elements of
the society the accountability within religious organisations is largely visible as an
informal and social practice rather than a stakeholder-oriented rational mechanism. 1023
It shows how people are more attuned to socialising, informal and identity forms of
accountability in the spirit of religion, whereas the absence of this spirit would
possibly make them demand more formal mechanisms. This high religious spirit
combines with the structural elements of these societies and people, thereby producing
a type of substantive rational calculative practice (Weber, 1968). As the case data
reveals, their judgments on accountability practices rely upon less obvious and
informal social dimensions, i.e. trust aspirations loyalty and patronage relations
and social status, powers and rivalries representative of the features in socialising
accountability (Roberts, 1991, 1996; Jacobs and Walker, 2004; Gray et al., 2006). These
indigenous people are more obsessed with qualitative factors shaping the formal
accountability, i.e. relationships and communitarism rather than rational accounting
numbers and calculations. The central role of the lay people and devotees, rather than
Priests and other Priestly elite, is put forward in this study, although their level of
control might differ to some extent in the Hindu temple as opposed to the Buddhist
one. Overall, these are aspects that have been rarely considered in the literature and
this study therefore contributes by demonstrating the interplay between devotees,
religion, accounting and accountability.
These findings do remind us that accountability is a technical as well as a social and
institutional practice (Hopwood and Miller, 1994). In fact, within the scope of social and
institutional practice, accountability entails a technology of governance and a
language of meanings. These technologies and meanings of accountability become
blended in different forms, i.e. formal/individual/relational to informal/identity/
socialising according to the contexts in which it operates. The accountability rationales
thus become substantive (Weber, 1947) to specific actors in these contexts and, in
turn, are redefined through a variety of cultural, political and social norms and in this
case by the religious spirit. Broadly, the paper implicates that accountability
practices in community-based, grassroots non-profit organizations are not merely
reporting facts of economic activities and a neutral system. Instead, they initiate
new forms of accountability systems and reproduce structural conditions, we observed
in our case studies.
Notes
1. Karma is a Sanskrit word meaning all good and bad actions. It covers all kinds of intentional
actions whether mental, verbal or physical, thoughts, words and deeds. In its ultimate sense,
Karma means all moral and immoral actions. It is neither fatalism nor a doctrine of
predetermination. The past influences the present but does not dominate it, for Karma is
past as well as present. The past and present both influence the future. In fact, the past is a
background against which life goes on from moment to moment (Thittila, 1996).
2. Pin is the concept of merit in Buddhism. Merits could be said to have positive karmic
influences. As the adept of Buddhist meditation practises, merit naturally arises and this can
AAAJ be dedicated to others. This is an expression of the Bodhisattva Vow to strive for perfection
and enlightenment but to forego it to help all beings (Gombrich, 1971).
22,7
3. Wesak is the holiest day in Buddhism. On this day are celebrated the birth, the
enlightenment, and the death of the Buddha. This day is usually in the middle or last two
weeks of May.
4. History states that it was on a Poson (full moon day) that Arahath Mahinda, son of the great
1024 King Asoka of India, and a group of missionaries came to Sri Lanka to spread the word of the
Buddha.
5. Katina ceremony is the culmination of the Vas season. At the end of three months a special
robe known as the Katina is offered to monks of every monastery who observed the Vas.
The word Vas means the rains; Viseema means the dwelling. Therefore, Vas Viseema means
to sojourn during the rainy season (Thittila, 1996).
6. Maha Shivaratri is celebrated in February or March every year. This day marks the night
when Lord Shiva performed the Tandava. On this day, Shiva devotees observe fast and offer
fruits, flowers and bel leaves on the Shiva Linga (Eisenlohr, 2004).
7. Sankranthi or Sankranti signifies the beginning of the harvest season for the farmers of
Indian subcontinent. This is a harvest festival celebrated not only all over India but also in
other countries.
8. Diwali signifies many different things to Hindu people. In north India and in Mauritius,
Diwali celebrates Ramas homecoming, namely his return to Ayodhya after the defeat of
Ravana and his coronation as king. Everywhere however, it signifies the renewal of life, and
accordingly it is common to wear new clothes on the day of the festival and light the house at
night using small oil lamps. Also, it signals the approach of winter and the beginning of the
sowing season.
9. In any case, one must note that a strict observance of Hindu rituals and practices principally
applies to the Brahmin and upper castes (Doniger and Smith, 1991).
10. Nikaya is a general term for those schools of Buddhism that accept only the class of sutras
collected in the Pali Canon as authentic. Historically, there were many Nikaya schools, but
only one still exists today: the Theravada.
11. Oddly enough, trust is usually accepted as an obvious concept (Blois, 1999) without an
explicit challenge of its meaning and implications (Lewis and Weigert, 1985; Seal and
Vincent-Jones, 1997; Swift, 2001).
12. As further evidence of the low level of influence of the Priesthood in Hindu temples in
Mauritius, the Treasurer commented on a recent case where the federation took action to
replace a local Priest in neighbouring affiliated temple. He stated that: the priest was not up
to the standard of making sermons and teachings and embarrassed the devotees in front of
invitees. The employee status of Priests in the temples greatly diminished their power and
influence in the organization.
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Corresponding author
Kelum Jayasinghe can be contacted at: knjay@essex.ac.uk