A Model of Financial Accountability and the Church of England

This paper builds on the growing concern in certain areas of the accountability literature that there is a need to understand current practices in actual organisations before making prescriptive pronouncements about these practices. This interest brings the literature on accountability closer to certain studies in accounting addressed to understanding these practices in the organisational contexts in which they are exercised. The paper summarises the current 'skeletal’theoretical insights concerning accountability in practice and then‘fleshes’out this model by looking at the specific financial accountability practices of the Church of England. It concludes with certain situation-specific insights as well as pointers for both the skeletal model and research in this area more generally.