A study of the effects of accountability, transparency and good leadership to the success of Zimbabwean church administrated business : a multi-case study

Abstract

The Church is widely regarded as a non profit making organization which does not make substantial incomes and very few people would want to find out what really transpires in a church. Although churches are spiritual organizations whose main aim is the propagation of the gospel, they handle huge volumes of cash and influence a lot of business activities through their various social and economic interventions in the community like income generating projects, building of schools and professional colleges, leadership training and their modes of operation are slowly conforming to business models found in the corporate world.

Christians complain about lack of accountability, transparency and good leadership in churches claiming that churches collect a lot of money from believers, but its use is not adequately being accounted for and there is little transparency in the handling of cash. Churches are shying away from public scrutiny and leadership in churches is comfortable with being partially accountable to senior pastors ignoring parishioners who contribute to finance the operations of the churches. Accountability, transparency and good leadership instills confidence in believers which enables them to joyfully contribute money to successfully fund the business operations of the church. Accountability and transparency plug out the vices of corruption and financial embezzlement and believers demand an accountable and transparent leadership.

This research is inductive in nature and looked at the data on accountability, transparency and good leadership first before generalizing on the effect these variables have on the success of church run businesses. Case studies were used as a research strategy and a telephone administrated questionnaire was employed as the data collection instrument. The qualitative results were presented and analyzed before coming up with conclusions and recommendations of policy measures and legal frameworks that can be put in place to promote accountability, transparency and good leadership to prop up the success of church administrated businesses.