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This study is an effort to fill the gap in knowledge and methodological limitations of current research interest on factors affecting budgeting and financial management practices at local level of public administration. The focus of most research on budgeting and financial management practices within government sector has been at the national and sectoral levels. The general notion has been that modalities, regulations and policies for budgeting and financial management can be developed at the national level and then sent down to implementers for their compliance to effect the needed change. This has led to over-focus on the national level. A conceptual model is proposed that establishes a sequential network of factors affecting sound budgeting and financial management practices at the local level. The main argument is that contextual factors, the disposition of management teams, characteristics of district health directorates and strategic planning at the local level all affect the achievement of sound budgeting and financial management practices. Hypotheses were developed to articulate the direct and indirect effect of sound budgeting and financial management practices by employing the path analytic framework. The analysis shows that district health directorate characteristics have a strong direct effect, whereas strategic planning and budgeting exert a strong indirect effect. Hence, strengthening of budget and financial management practices should take into consideration all the variables studied with strategic planning as its foundation block.
Keywords: Strategic planning, Budgeting and financial management practices.
Introduction
The health sector of Ghana has been strengthening its public financial management systems. The aim is to address challenges of budget comprehensiveness, credibility, predictability, transparency and accountability. It is reported that budgeting and financial management challenges such as inadequate funding, unpredictable disbursement, incomplete and untimely reporting of financial data have the potential to negatively impact on service performance outcome (MoH, 2010, p. 23). This study takes an empirical investigation into factora affcting the implmentation of sound budget and financial managment practices at the district level.
Sound budgeting and financial management practices is defined in this study to embrace widely accepted principles guiding budget preparation, execution, monitoring and evaluation (Allen & Tommasi, 2001; World Bank, 1998). The aim is to enhance spending controls, linkages between resource allocation and priorities and use of funds to achieve targeted objectives. According to (Graham,...