An Interpretive Inquiry of Accounting Practices in Religious Organisations

This paper reports the study of accounting practices as embedded in two religious organisations in Malaysia. The research is an attempt to study accounting practices in a cultural setting that has not been the subject of previous interpretive accounting research. The study also makes a contribution towards the need for accounting research to become more explanatory of accounting as social practice wherein theory is both informed, and is developed by observation. This is achieved by developing grounded theory from the data and is in accordance with recent calls for case studies in accounting research to be more concerned with producing social theories of accounting practice.