Public stewardship

Public Stewardship

CJA 365

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Public Stewardship

Public stewardship is a condition in which the government act as a responsibility protector and active managersfor the state resources. For a country to achieve this state,it needs to have national and subnational institutes for governance ensuring management, oversight of security services and civilian control and protect country’s resources. Mismanagement of public resource can motivate violence. Thus, there is aneed for control and audit capabilities both for civil society and the government to facilitate effective stewardship. Competition for public resources can cause violence thus, effective stewardship of the country resources helps prevent violence as a result of resources conflict. Also, responsible stewardship for country’s resources enhances protects, legitimacy and generates necessaryrevenue to provide the citizens with basic services(Sardžoska & Tang, 2015).

Protecting country’s resources, in particular through effective budgeting,is essentialstewardship elements. There is critical need for public stewardship in budgeting. A Public budget is a government plan to utilize public resources to meet their needs. Good stewardship involves budget transparency where the general public members are allowed to access information about the planning and utilization of public resources. Budget transparency is said to be disclosure of all; relevant financial reportingis a systematic and timely manner. Most personnel with theresponsibility of creating public budget need to make ethical decisions to avoid violence among other challenges. When the process of budgeting is combined with public participation and budget transparency in the budget making process combat potential corruption, contribute to thejudicious use of public resources and increase the government agencies public accountability(Sardžoska & Tang, 2015).

The budget transparency allowed the citizens to assess and determined whether the public officials are good stewards of the public resources. The BT is an essential precondition for public participation and accountability in thegovernance process. In several countries,social organization and civil society representatives have for as long time demanded from the government to formulate budget formulation from thedistrict level to make the national budget pro-poor and democratic one. Some governments have promised to devolve the authority to district level which is yet to get started.

The Washington-based open Budget acts as a watchdog for various countries in the world. The budget is preparedwith the help of local partners making it democratic and pro-poor based. Also, the budget information is made assessed to the citizens in an open manner making it more thus, enhancing accountability and budget commitment to transparency. Based on Open Budget Index many countries have scored above 60 thus, characterized that citizens are given accessto budget data in a more comprehensive manner. Having good public stewardship is very essentialin any country since it prevents conflict among public members for the fight of public resources due to unfair distribution. When a country haseffective public stewardship,it tends to provide essential services to the public. To protect goods and services for a country,it is important to have good leaders who can protect the resources(Maina, 2016). The public leaders have a responsibility to act as the other people face and to represent and listening to the people. A good stewardship opens ways to meet future outcome for a country that should cover backside leading to the country’s success day by day.In all sectors of public budgeting,leaders should have effective stewardship skills to ensure public resources are protected.

Leaders’ responsibility for budgeting should havean individual ethical requirement tohave agoodpublic stewardship to protectstate resources, reliability, trustworthy and trustfulness. The leaders should ensure there is no suspicious criminal activity in the process of public budgeting since it can jeopardize the entire process. Bad stewardship or unethical public stewardship led to thewrong distribution of resources while increases the poverty levels. A good example of a man who had unethical stewardship behavior was Bernie Madoff born in April 1938. The man made history on a Ponzi schemes where he failed to comply with all ethical requirement(Maina, 2016).

There are several consequences of poor or unethical stewardship.There are rules and regulations that leaders in the accounting sector need to follow when making financial decisions. The information provided need to be accurate and reliable to assist in decision-making processes. Unethical stewardship may result to increased criminal activities, harm the country’s financial reputation, hurt the decision-making processes in other sectors and increase the levels of untrustworthy. Poor stewardship in public budgeting means the persons are ready and willing to break the set rules and regulations to fulfill their personal interest over the public interest. When unethical personnel aregiventhe responsibility for budgeting, they may embezzle the public funds. Also, unethicalbudgeting personnel may manipulate the data to commit several crimes such as fraud among other things. Also, unethical stewardship may trigger conflict among public members who feel the public resources are unfairly distributed. Also, the financial information may lead to poor decision making since the data provided is manipulated or it is not accurate. Lastly, poor stewardship can scare way investors since they fear their money might be mismanaged or embezzled(Maina, 2016).

References

Sardžoska, E. G., & Tang, T. L. P. (2015). Monetary intelligence: Money attitudes—unethical intentions, intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction, and coping strategies across public and private sectors in Macedonia. Journal of Business Ethics, 130(1), 93-115.

Maina, R. A. W. (2016). Effect of Transformational Stewardship on Service Delivery by County Governments in Kenya (Doctoral dissertation, COHRED, JKUAT).