Introduction

• Religious organizations have been neglected in NGO research

• Religious organizations are:

• Advocates of social justice

• Major deliverers of social welfare services

• Centres of community activity

• Contributors to economic activity

• Some research has looked at Islamic influences (Karim and Ali, 1989; Abdul-Rahman and Goddard, 1998)

• “This paper examines the planning and budgetary control systems linkages, and the nature of the budgetary control processes”

• “[The previous paper] developed a conceptual map of environmental influences on the planning process and examines the nature of that resulting planning process”

• 4 internal and external environment factors emerged:

• Community culture

• Resources pressure

• Consultative bureaucracy

• Compliance oriented accounting information

• The reactive planning approach was:

• Short term

• Resources oriented

• “Reacted to short term environmental pressures rather than proactively creating a longer term set of strategies”

• “The budget may be employed as an uncertainty coping mechanism”

• Tension was found between “sacred vision and the secular budgetary system”

• Budgeting and budgeting negotiation was found to have a “unique strategic facilitating role”

Grounded theory methodology

• The grounded theory methodology is an “approach that allowed the possibility of unique concepts and relationships to be inductively derived from the organization under study

Organization structure and budget process

• Most functional areas were accountable to two major committees

• The Commission for Mission

• The Resources Commission

• Financial structure was based on fund accounting model which included over 1300 trust funds

• Fund accounting = An accounting model that focuses on accountability rather than profitability

• Found 3 concepts which facilitated the emergence of the “incremental budgetary mélange” in response to the VSC’s reactive planning

• Intra-organizational relationships

• Managerial expertise

• Governing agendas

Intra-organizational relationships

Parish-presbytery-Synod

• “System of distributed decision-making led to competition between agenda and operations at each level with parishes seeking increased decision making autonomy”

• The Synod was viewed as an ‘ivory tower’ or ‘tax officer’

The two commissions

• The CM was intended to be a policy setting and strategic planning arm of the church

• The RC was seen by CM and RC personnel as ‘harbouring and nurturing’ resources

• This terminology had positive and negative perceptions

• There was a degree of tension between the two commissions

• Clash of commission cultures

• Role conflict

• Individuals across the divisions of the two commissions enjoyed cooperative relationships though

• Lack of organizational definition of who was responsible for strategic planning

Relationships in tension

• Who had the authority to initiate resource-consuming strategies?

• Who has the skills?

• Who has the mandate to undertake strategic planning

• What was the appropriate balance between harbouring and nurturing?

Managerial expertise

• Was agreed that this ‘visionary’ expertise lay in the RC

• Many executive secretaries in the CM felt the lacked managerial expertise and training

• Time available to managers for strategic planning appeared to be constrained by the volume of work required by their functional responsibilities

• “Financial and budgetary expertise was seen to be lacking or at best highly variable among both division executive secretaries and members of management committees

• Many “misunderstood budget reports and made incorrect diagnoses or abrogated responsibility for monitoring results against budget to the secretaries or accountants in the RC

Governing agendas

• 1) Annual meetings of Synod

• 2) State and Federal government policies

• Budgets and projects were influenced by other internal and external factors

• “The internal constituents bring pressure to bear for action on their...

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