Public Stewardship
Budgeting involves creating a predetermined course of action on how organizations spend their funds to attain their desired goal. Many companies, both in the private and public sectors, are implementing the strategy to make plans about utilizing the firms’ resources. The whole process of budgeting assists organizations examines and monitor the use of funds. If the intended objective is not attained, a need for taking corrective strategies to correct the anomalies reported is crucial. In another scenario, budgeting objectives are not achieved because the individuals who were trusted to apply the budgeting strategy did not display any instance of integrity or misused the company’s resources, therefore, showing a lack of stewardship.
All company’s stewards are concerned with the protection of public resources within the organization. Therefore, available steward ensures good governance to eliminate corruption through understanding key areas that need to be emphasized in training to enhance accountability and transparency in the public sector (Aleksandrov, Evgenii, Anatoli, and Giuseppe, 124). The significance of public stewardship in budgeting connects to the requirement to offer careful oversight of the use of taxpayer monies, which are often insufficient.
Usually, stewardship is categorized into good governance and accountability. Stewardship is essential in all organizations, be it public or private institutions. Therefore, it the requirement of every steward to oversee the running of every activity within the organization. This reveals the roles of various stewards and their needs in every institution. For instance, the need to account for the finance spent to facilitate multiple programs. This has helped many institutions to manage the use of their funds. Therefore, companies can maximize their profits to identify the money assigned to every organization’s activity quickly.
More importantly, stewardship plays a significant role in keeping records of every activity and information concerning various programs’ run and management. Recording keeping strategy is an essential strategy that firms need to implement as it gives evidence to financial accountability and serves as a basis for controlling. This helps various companies to anticipate their success soon. Similarly, firms can quickly evaluate the efficiency of the workforce. The concept of stewardship has been helped different public and private companies to achieve economic growth and development. This strategy has ensured equality in the distribution of incomes.
There are various ethical issues that a public steward must exhibit to ensure overall efficiency and accountability for financial expenditures. To be considered an experienced and competent available steward, they must display personal integrity to help them observe the highest standards of conduct to motivate public confidence and trust in various services rendered by the public. Also, an available steward should be able to endorse ethical organization by straining to achieve morals principles. Encouraging social equity within the organization is also another attribute that a public steward should exhibit. This will ensure that everyone within the organization is treated fairly to respect every member of the staff’s rights and decisions. Similarly, it is required of a public steward to encourage and promote the public’s interest and inspire public participation by allowing staff members to suggest the managing department.
Many public organizations consider the traits of an individual in the recruitment in the stewardship department. And an institution is likely to recruit those individuals the exhibit trait that will help achieve overall performance. A steward’s absenteeism rate should be minimal and should give explanations should they report to duty late. Likewise, a steward must be willing to report the ethical issues without fear of vengeance (Puspaningrum, Astrid, Nattaporn, and Sri, 89). This is to endorse safety to ensure that every employee feels comfortable. Lastly, a member is only considered a steward if he or she can commit to the various duties assigned to improve job performance.
There are many penalties for poor stewardship, and organizations must consider such consequences to help them perform effectively and account for the use of every finance given. A steward may lose get fired in case of dishonesty, therefore, leading to loss of reputation. No company will be will to hire such an individual soon. Also, poor stewardship leads to loss of human capital in that clients may lose trust in what the company offers. Likewise, there are also personal penalties that a steward may encounter if proven to perform unethically; he or she may lose his position. Penalties associate with this kind of activity include; long-term imprisonment and financial loss.
References
Aleksandrov, Evgenii, Anatoli Bourmistrov, and Giuseppe Grossi. “Performance budgeting as a “creative distraction” of accountability relations in one Russian municipality.” Journal of Accounting in Emerging Economies (2020).
Puspaningrum, Astrid, Nattaporn Thongsri, and Sri Palupi Prabandari. “The impact of managements’ unethical behavior on organizational trust.” Polish Journal of Management Studies 21 (2020).