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The purpose of this paper is to establish the importance of accounting in the management of Spanish military hospitals by the St John’s Order (SJO) of the Roman Catholic Church in the eighteenth century, a time of crisis between the Church and the State. The sacred mission of the Order required that they had a significant role outside the Roman Catholic Church in the care and treatment of the sick and infirm which required them to establish hospitals throughout Spain and across the lands that it had conquered. The study establishes that accounting played a key role in ensuring the success of the unconventional commercial relationship between the SJO and the government and the military.

Niebuhr’s typology is used to help understand how accounting practices were consistent, indeed essential, expectations of the sacred mission of the SJO and not something which represented a denial of the Order’s religious beliefs. The paper relies primarily on documents and other material located in Spanish archives.

The SJO accepted that secular accounting and accountability processes were relevant to their search for God’s love and to showing this love to others. The need for the Order to be accountable to the State was not regarded as profane and antithetical to their religious beliefs. Adopting Niebuhr’s typology of religion and society, this study concludes that the Order was an extraordinary example of Christ the transformer of the culture.

This study recognises the need to deepen the understanding of the way in which accounting practices have often played a critical role in the activities of religious organisations by examining an extraordinary example of one organisation which was engaged in an unusual, ongoing, highly complex commercial relationship with the Spanish State.

This article draws on my doctoral research into the expansion of the Catholic educational mission in New Zealand in the years from 1945 to 1965. The project utilised archival and documentary sources and interviews with thirty three Catholic educators: twenty one female religious from the Sisters of Mercy, Dominican Sisters and the Religious of the Sacred Heart and twelve male religious from the Marist Brothers, Christian Brothers and the Society of Mary (Marist Priests) and two former diocesan directors of Catholic education.

Organisation Development has played a significant role in the renewal of Catholic religious orders since the Second Vatican Council (1962‐5). Religious orders have used consultants in their change processes. As religious orders are a unique form of non‐profit organisation and have a particular culture based on their vocational service nature, consultants must be sensitive to this culture. This article describes OD interventions on four levels of apostolic religious ministry.

With their specific characteristics, religious orders provide an interesting environment that can be used to deepen the understanding and dynamics of work motivation in the public sector. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The paper empirically investigates the levels and kinds of motivation (from extrinsic to intrinsic) in different religious orders, and analyze some major factors of influence. A broad survey of monastic leaders offers a unique data set to analyze the influence of constitutions and traditions on motivation in a quantitative and comparative way. The theoretical foundations are based upon self-determination theory (SDT), formalization and public service motivation.

The paper shows that even the most constrained and hierarchically structured communities succeed in preventing a crowding out of self-determined motivation. On the one hand, this can be ascribed to the influence of faith and religion. On the other hand, and this is the focus of the paper, the analysis suggests that if norms and structures are approved and considered essential, a crowding-out effect is absent, and motivation levels can be maintained.

This study has an explorative character; it is intended to provide interest for further research. Because of the particular position of religious orders, and equally because of the relatively small sample and few variables concerning the approval of rules and traditions, further investigations in other settings are needed.

An alternative path to increase public service motivation comes into play. The negative effects of little or no autonomy and strict regulation in an organization's daily routines can be tempered by a conscious composition and awareness of governance, i.e. an understanding of and agreement upon constitutions, rules and traditions.

The approval of constitutions and traditions has received little study, yet offers new insights into public service motivation, SDT and formalization.

Social action implemented by the Church via its affiliated entities, foundations and associations may be viewed as a uniform activity. In reality, however, several organizational profiles exist that depend on the origin of these organizations (lay or religious), the scope of their activities (local or general) and their dependence on resources (whether from public administration or civil society). The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In this paper, the authors examine this diversity based on a 2015 study of every Catholic Church social organization with headquarters in Catalonia. For the study, the authors conducted a detailed analysis of these organizations in order to determine their nature, scope and structure. The methodology combined questionnaire, interviews and non-participant observation.

The social actions of these organizations lead to interesting debates, such as those on: charity/assistentialism vs social justice; professionalization vs voluntarism; and personal autonomy vs functional dependence resulting from the action. This study also highlights how important it is that Church organizations carry out social actions to generate social welfare in the welfare states of southern European countries.

It is the first time that a study of the social impact of the church and its organizational implications in Spain has been made.

Legal and philosophical scholarship on religious education typically focuses on religious schools that challenge core liberal values. Religious schools that offer their students quality secular education, and whose religious character is mild, do not raise these concerns and have therefore evaded scrutiny thus far. This chapter argues that the latter kind of religious schools, which I call “creaming religious schools,” may have a negative effect on educational equality and should therefore be subject to restrictive legal regulation. The negative effect on equality is caused by the fact that when successful, these schools appeal not only to members of the religious community but also to non-member high-achieving students who leave the public schools (a process called creaming) thus weakening them. The chapter argues that the harm caused to public schools cannot be redeemed by alluding to the right to religious education because the religious justification for creaming religious schools is relatively weak. The chapter then examines several potential legal measures for contending with creaming religious schools: the antidiscrimination doctrine, which the chapter rejects, showing that it actually aggravates creaming, locating schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods, restricting tuition, reflective enrollment policy, and finally, the total prohibition of establishing creaming religious schools.

All religious activists appear to look alike, and indeed are treated by the news media as one in the same. However, many variations exist. On one level, different activists choose different tactics. Terrorism is only the most extreme (and the rarest) form of public action. Other activists utilize media campaigns, public intimidation and democratic choice (by putting forward candidates in elections). On a more basic level, great differences exist in the desired outcome of the struggle itself and in the degree to which religion is central to the conflict.