| dc.description.abstract | Resources are scarce and our wants are unlimited. The endless wants and
limited resources bring about the need for efficient and effective allocation of
resources in a way that brings stability, growth and profitability of an organization.
Effective budgeting involves a right budgeting process, a consultative approach, and
an adherence to policy regulating the process. However, effective budgeting is not
enough. There needs to be an effective budgetary control for entities to have a good
financial performance.
These two elements, budgeting and budgetary control are inevitable in any
type of organization, including the church institutions. The study was aimed at
helping administrators in the church institutions budget effectively and effectively use approved budgets as control tools in their organizations so as to improve the
organization’s financial performance. Once the relationship between budgeting,
budgetary control and financial performance has been established, the study will help
the administrators of organisations to take budgeting and budgetary control concepts
seriously. They will formulate and/or adopt policies that promote effective budgeting
and budgetary controls in all entities for the benefit of all organisations and their
sustainable growth while supporting the organization’s mission. The study was a
cross-sectional causal study that helped the researcher analyse the effects of budgeting
and budgetary control on financial performance of selected Zimbabwe Union
Conference entities.
The study was done in Zimbabwe using six conferences and it made use of all
executive committee members of each of the six entities and all the union officers.
Other employees who are either involved in the budgetary process or who make use
of these budgets were selected using purposive and census sampling procedures. Data
was collected using a 7-point Likert scale questionnaire and analyzed using SPSS
version 20 after it was checked for validity and reliability. For the descriptive aspect,
the data was used to calculate means and standard deviations. Correlations and
regression analysis were used for inferential statistics. There was a statistically
significant impact (p< .05) in both effective budgeting and effective budgetary control
on financial performance.
The researcher concluded that both effective budgeting and effective
budgetary control are inevitable in any organization’s financial performance. The
researcher recommended that the prevailing budgeting and budgetary control
practices be encouraged in the future and the officers be trained in areas of weakness,
especially the consultative approach. There also needs to be two-way communication that is maintained throughout the budgeting process and those
involved in the budgeting and budgetary control processes be trained in order to
increase their expertise. Further research is recommended to explore the area under
study together with the other parts of financial management for non-profit faith-based
organizations. The same study can be done in other institutions in Zimbabwe, and
beyond the region, and the findings can be compared to assess if there are better ways
being practiced elsewhere that can be shared and emulated. Other studies that
combine both the perceptions and the financial data can be done to enrich the
findings. | en_US |
