Managed Transparency as Platform-Era Decoupling in Internet Philanthropy: Evidence From China

Abstract

Digital philanthropy platforms are widely expected to enhance accountability by making charitable activities publicly traceable. Yet in China’s internet philanthropy, platform visibility yields uneven accountability consequences. Drawing on 90 in-depth interviews across six field sites (Chongqing, Guizhou, Shanghai, Qinghai, Hainan, and Taiwan as a relationally comparable contrast), this study advances a decoupling account of transparency reform under platformized visibility. I introduce managed transparency to describe how organizations manage the production of traceability through three practices—formatting, pacing, and routing—so that openness is demonstrable while accountability remains manageable across audiences. Across sites, platform tools such as dashboards, rankings, and donation logs are rarely rejected; instead, they are integrated into routines that standardize disclosure, calibrate update rhythms, and coordinate where scrutiny and interpretation are handled. These practices generate recognizable decoupling outcomes, including ceremonial conformity, symbolic compliance, selective disclosure, and paper compliance, reorganized around digital interfaces where visibility itself becomes an object of organizational management. The study contributes to business and society research by specifying a platform-era mechanism of decoupling and by offering diagnostic implications for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting, and other forms of platform-mediated accountability.