Accounting for God: accounting and accountability practices in the Society of Jesus (Italy, XVI-XVII centuries)

It is argued in this paper that the development of accounting and accountability practices within the Society of Jesus from the 16th to the 17th centuries cannot be reduced to an economic explanation that views them merely as tools for measuring and allocating economic resources thereby explaining the formation of hierarchies. Rather, their development and refinement were tightly linked to the absolutist ideology of the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Counter-Reformation, conceived of here as a complex work of compromise among theological, religious, political, institutional, and social instances, of which the hierarchical structure of the Order and its accounting records were only the visible traces. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.