QUALITATIVE RESULTS
5.6 Qualitative Findings
After the complete collection of empirical data and evidence was acquired by interviewing the participants, the central process was to interpret and analyze it by integrating it with the prior theoretical framework. Consequently, an overall understanding of budgeting with IBP transpired as a dynamic interconnection of the areas that were analyzed. This study aims to contribute to the knowledge and interconnection of theories and concepts based on empirical findings previously published. Therefore, qualitative findings can possibly be produced from a more complex examination of budgeting through academic and business scholars’ theoretical assumptions. Additionally, business managers’ empirical consciousness can be examined together with explanations and the significance in order to investigate the impact of policy formulation activities on their firms’ value systems and ethics of belief.
Considering the main research inquiry, the analyses of the participants’
interviews and their respective firms’ documentations with regard to their consciousness of how budgeting activities concerning the firm’s stakeholders had an impact on their department and financial performance, yielded mixed results. There was
a growing paradox between the high-level executives’ perceptions, guidelines and norms, and the absence of absolute standards for central budgeting. This is relevant to scholars who believe that these qualities are probably different in reaction to different ethical behaviors, cross cultures, generational groups, and institutional and individual value systems. Overall the study found a positive but weak correlation. It’s generally held that budgeting can generate department performance, and thus most sizable units were energetically involved in it, yet some high-level executives were aware of its involvement in this important subject. As can be seen from the analysis section, the challenge of budgeting involvement ranges from not having enough finances, resources, performers, and time, to agencies’ capabilities to participate in a narcotics aspect.
Above all, whether they are sincerely attempting to be generous to society or they just want to broadcast their performance in order to strengthen department impressions and eventually publicize their positive reputation in the financial performance, it eventually should bring mutual benefit in the end. However, IBP practice probably should be unique for different departments and could be strategic in nature when it leads to increased gains. As a matter of fact, IBP might not be required in some departments, whereas IBP can be used as alternative budget planning. This inequality existed as a result of some departments needing to socialize with morally sensitive subjects, social needs coercion, and to suit governmental legal and restrictive frameworks regarding narcotics. As a consequence, before the effort to participate in any IBP activities, departments need to fastidiously ponder the strengths and weaknesses of such actions.
Considering that these semi-structured interviews and observations were conducted with numerous high-level executives’ inputs and perspectives, the findings are absolutely crucial for analyzing any supplementary factors, like department KPI or department budgeting sentiment. Moreover, the results were completely essential to explore the importance of their driving forces and their current allocation, particularly by knowledgeable qualitative researchers. Last, IBP has to be a completely premeditated activity that's not its own application as a self-publicizing or self- proclamation tool, however ideally, to deliberately make a contribution to citizens at large. During this activity, departments ought to be ready to develop IBP perceptions and be dedicated to its implementation at each level of connected stakeholders.
The study found that the traditional approach to budgeting is an approach that is forced down from the top. The overall reason for an authoritative approach to budgeting is that of control. Control is often defined as how many subordinates a manager can effectively and efficiently impact at the executive level. Dixon (2001) stated that “the upper levels of the agencies needed to control both the work practices of employees and their access to and use of organizational resources”. The findings did not determine if this was a superior budgeting method or not. However, is concluded that the traditional approach to budgeting could lead to game playing. Huxham (1996) described how game playing is simply agreeing with anything that was presented to operational managers, rather than taking initiative towards improvement. Ultimately, as Huxham (1996) noted, game playing begins “in the way they (policy formulators) participate in the budget process”.
Within the IBP approach to budgeting, as the researcher further discovered in observations, participation is not always evident. The behavior of those involved, directly or not, is predictable and a natural result of a centralized, top-down budget system. Participants did not delve into the merits, or lack thereof, with traditional budgeting. The belief was that this process could work for some agencies depending on the leadership of the agencies. However, the findings concluded that although executives are not necessarily included in the up-front preparation of the budget document, with a traditional approach the executives become very astute at playing a budget game in order to achieve their own agenda.
Even though some data has pointed out that IBP did not appear to significantly have an impact on the large extent of agencies’ financial performance, eventually IBP activities could have an effect on the policy formulation powers of executives who have a perception, or take an interest in, the budget commitment of their agencies’ operations and objectives. In comparison to a traditional approach, the IBP model offers an alternative to the budget process which is referred to as the IBP Integration Model (IBPI). In contrast to the traditional budgeting approach, IBPI considers a bottom-up approach to the budgeting process. This approach is more inclusive, as executives embrace an empowering and encouraging attitude in personal interactions with their subordinates and budget bureau personnel. This delegates meaningful work to their operation and tries to avoid micro-managing along the budget planning process. The
reasoning behind this IBPI model is to allow the mid-level and top executives the freedom to improve the process and promote an intelligent aspect towards leadership positions, rather than be administrators.
This study is cautious in suggesting that IBPI is superior to traditional budgeting practices. The skepticism was apparent when the qualitative study concluded that a new management philosophy or management style will not make any difference in agencies with the same negative perspectives toward acquiring new knowledge. The success of the budget process, within a government agency, will usually depend on the management style and the perception of bureaucratic attitudes, regardless of the new budget theory that is assumed. The findings of the qualitative work are illustrated in Table 5.3.
Table 5.3 Qualitative Data Analysis
Factors Exc1 Exc2 Exc2 Obs1 Obs2 Obs3 Obs4
Strategic Planning √ - - √ - - √
Long-Term Planning √ √ √ √ √ √ √
Medium-Term Planning √ √ √ √ √ √ √
Performance Indicator √ √ √ √ √ √ √
Stability of Government Policy √ - √ - - √ -
Complexity of Policy √ √ √ √ √ √ √
Leadership √ √ √ √ √ √
Number of Agencies √ √ √ √ √ √ √
Diversity of Agencies √ √ √ √ √ √ √
IBP Resource √ √ - √ √ √ √
Flexibility and Openness to Changing Circumstance of Collaboration
√ √ - - √ - √
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From the findings, Strategic Planning, Stability of Government Policy and Flexibility and Openness to Changing Circumstance of Collaboration have a low selection rate. This finding is in line with the quantitative results for non-statistically significant factors of P value > 0.05. The detail of the in-depth interviews and observations can be seen in the Appendices.