Abstract
Budgeting system as one of the administrative and economic subsystems has always been the attention of governments and organizations. Today, for many reasons, governments need comprehensiveness and systemic thinking, and as a result, the integration of management and economic systems and transformation in the public sector, and in order to increase productivity and communicate between strategic and macro goals or operational plans, provide their budgeting systems in a process of improvement or change to a performance-oriented system. The implementation of operational budgeting in executive bodies improves the performance and increases the effectiveness and efficiency of the organization and finally provides easy access to the goals of the organization. Institutions and executive bodies need structural reforms from the perspective of operational budgeting. The lack of information of managers, experts and accountants of executive bodies and the lack of knowledge about the process of operational budgeting or relying on traditional methods can bring problems to the organization. Several factors hinder the implementation of operational budgeting in departments and executive bodies. In this research, using a descriptive-survey research method, the obstacles affecting the establishment of operational budgeting were examined and the role of environmental, executive and control factors as the main obstacles to the establishment of operational budgeting in the executive bodies of Semnan province were investigated. The research population consists of 190 experts, managers and accountants of the executive bodies of Semnan province, 127 of whom were selected using Morgan's sampling table with stratified random sampling and simple random sampling. An 18-question questionnaire was given to people. Using the opinions of professors, content validity was confirmed and its reliability was obtained at a high level. The results of the research using t-test showed that each of the environmental, executive and control factors are considered as the main obstacles to the establishment of operational budgeting in the executive bodies of Semnan province. Also, using the Friedman test, it was determined that among the above factors, the control and executive factors are the first and second priorities, respectively, and the environmental factors as the third priority are effective factors in the non-establishment of operational budgeting.
Key words: environmental factors, executive factors, control factors, operational budgeting, government organizations
Chapter 1
1 Generalities of the research
1.1 Introduction
Operational budgeting started in 1970 in the state governments of the United States as an innovation and invention in order to transform the budgeting system, and following that, other countries also gradually chose this budgeting system. In defining this system, most government budgeting researchers and experts agree that operational budgeting is a type of planning and budgeting system that emphasizes the relationship between the spent budget and the expected results. This system revolves around the two axes of "relationship between performance indicators and evaluation" and "relationship between budget and results" within its framework, different administrative departments are accountable based on specific standards called performance indicators, and managers have more discretion in determining the best way to achieve results (Qadimpour, 2008). They are responsible for combining resources to achieve organizational and government goals, and in line with their performance, they must be accountable to the people and their representatives (Babajani, 2017). The requirement of this accountability is the use of tools that increase the efficiency of the operations of government agencies and lead to better effectiveness of the resources used. One of the most important tools that can help managers in this sector is the use of the operational budgeting system as a result-oriented tool that tries to create a link between the consumed resources and the desired results (Essadi, 2016). Today, for many reasons, governments have a relatively large need for comprehensiveness and systemic thinking, and as a result, the integration of management and economic systems and the creation of transformation in the public sector, and in order to increase productivity and communicate between strategic and macro goals or operational plans, they improve their budgeting systems in a process.Today, for many reasons, governments have a relatively broad need for comprehensiveness and systemic thinking, and as a result, the integration of management and economic systems and the creation of transformation in the public sector. In order to increase productivity and communicate between strategic and macro goals or operational plans, their budgeting systems should be improved or changed to a performance-oriented or operational system in which the relationship between budget credits and the performance of executive bodies is clear and understandable, and in this way, create reliable and reliable information support for decisions. provide a budget (Hasanabadi, 2017).
Operational budgeting is an annual program in which the relationship between allocated financial resources and the results of the implementation of each program are shown with quantifiable indicators. In operational budgeting, credits are separated into programs, activities and designs, in addition to the volume of operations and the costs of implementing each operation according to scientific methods such as cost accounting, the method of measuring workload and activity-based costing (Abbasi, 1387, p. 48).
Operational budgeting by informing decision makers of better information about the results of each program and the set of programs that are used to achieve common goals, the ability of decision makers and managers in The assessment increases the budget demands of executive bodies (Aghaei, 2016, p. 277). Valid information and indicators of performance are very important to support operational budgeting, and in order for operational and financial information to be used in making better resource allocation decisions, decision-makers must be confident in the appropriateness and accuracy of the indicators they have provided (Saeidi, 2005, p. 106).
Operational budgeting requires fundamental changes in management information systems, accounting systems and in general in the management of government agencies (GAO, 2003). Since the purposeful allocation of credit to the activities of any organization can clarify the way of distribution of resources, the possibility of operational monitoring and waiting for access to the results, providing costs, the use of the operational budgeting method will be an effective step towards increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of credits (Qadri, 2015, p. 2). and debt, the views of managers towards economic issues in the institutions have changed and the need to use economic sciences and experts in this field was felt. Thus, the movement towards operational budgeting was started in the third and fourth development plans and was emphasized in the fifth development plan. According to the growing movement of reforms in the provision of public sector services, reforming the budgeting process based on cross-departmental and intra-sectoral coordination and in sync with other reforms was among the goals of the executive bodies and ministries.
Government institutions and agencies of Semnan province need structural reforms from the perspective of operational budgeting. Lack of knowledge of managers, experts and accountants of government agencies in Semnan province and lack of knowledge about operational budgeting process and relying on the implementation of traditional methods can bring problems to the organization. There are many factors that prevent the implementation of operational budgeting in government departments and agencies, and this research aims to answer the following questions:
Do environmental factors prevent the establishment of operational budgeting in the executive bodies of Semnan province?
Do executive factors prevent the establishment of operational budgeting in the executive bodies of Semnan province?
What is the priority of the above factors?
1.3 Importance and necessity of the issue
The last decade has been associated with theoretical and practical advances in budgeting processes. So now, in the progressive national economic system, the budget has become the most important tool for directing and optimally allocating resources in order to achieve development goals. The period of transition from traditional and conventional budgeting to operational budgeting is the beginning to clarify costs and carry out structural reforms and rationalize the role of the government in economic and cultural activities. In other words, the measures taken by the government to solve economic and social issues are reflected in the budget. In fact, the budget is a summarized form of how to plan, organize, guide and control the financial processes of the government, which has a coherent and organic intellectual support of allocating limited financial and non-financial resources against unlimited needs at the macro level (Saeidi, 2016).
Operational budgeting seeks to establish a link between performance indicators and resource allocation.