Responsiveness of rural development to budget management attributes: Evidence from Ogun State, Nigeria

Abstract

The essence of local government as contained in the Nigerian Constitution is bringing government closer to the people and make them feel the impact of governance. This study examined the responsiveness of rural development to three of the attributes of public budgeting (effectiveness, openness, and adequacy) in selected local governments in Ogun State, Nigeria. The objective was to establish the functional association and interconnectedness between the explained and explanatory variables. Data were gathered through the administration of a five-point Likert scale questionnaire distributed to 800 respondents in 8 local governments in Ogun States, out of which 348, representing 43.5%, were retrieved and used for analysis. Both descriptive statistics and ordinary least square regression were utilized in the study. The result showed that three explanatory variables, namely budget effectiveness, budget openness, and budget adequacy, are positively related to rural development, although the impact of budget adequacy was shown to be insignificant. The implication is that the effectiveness of budget management and the openness of the budget in terms of transparency and accountability are more responsive and influential determinants of rural development than the adequacy of the budget estimates. The paper, therefore, recommended improvement in budget openness through more consultations and accessibility to budget information by the public as well as monitoring of projects and programs within the local council to engender development and add value to the rural dwellers.

Development of International Cooperation of the Borderline Territorial Communities of Ukraine With the Eu Countries Under Martial Law

“…One of the important directions of the decentralization reform in Ukraine is to conduct budget decentralization which suggests a significant autonomy of territorial communities in the field of finance management. The experience confirms that the distribution of revenues is of extreme importance for some countries, but the internal and especially external revenues can be used inappropriately, stagnating efforts on the area development [9]. Therefore, following the example of the EU countries, Ukraine conducted "democratization of management and shift of the power balance from the central level to a local one; providing better administrative, functional, material, financial independence and establishment of independent bodies of local government, an increase of the level of their responsibility for decision making" [20, p. 38].…”

Developing an assessment framework of smartized upscale hotel workforce employability from the practitioners' perspective

“…Some have investigated the competencies necessary to overcome the problem of labor force inefficiency in the hospitality industry (Zwane et al ., 2014). The crucial hard skills relate to budget management (Egbide et al ., 2022), marketing and sales management (Dibia et al ., 2020), practical operations and production (Tesone and Ricci, 2006), applications of new technology (Samara et al ., 2020) and human resource management (Devyania et al. , 2020).…”

“…Some have investigated the competencies necessary to overcome the problem of labor force inefficiency in the hospitality industry (Zwane et al, 2014). The crucial hard skills relate to budget management (Egbide et al, 2022), marketing and sales management (Dibia et al, 2020), practical operations and production (Tesone and Ricci, 2006), applications of new technology (Samara et al, 2020) and human resource management (Devyania et al, 2020). Additionally, in recent years, with the rapid advancement of technology, the application of AI instruments has been widely adopted in all walks of life, including the hotel industry (Samara et al, 2020); the investigation of required skills has garnered academic attention.…”

“…However, with the ever-changing consumer preferences and the emergence of innovative operation models, management strategies and modern technologies, the decisive indicators of competency may be different from those used in the past. Prior research has divided the qualities essential for hotel workforce employability into the dimensions of power skills (Almeida et al ., 2021; Sreehari, 2021), hard skills (Adeyinka-Ojo, 2018; Egbide et al ., 2022) and personality traits (İnanır, 2022; İnanır and Ucar, 2019). It is also thought that the acceleration of the processes of automatization and smartization could help to ease the labor shortage crisis in the hospitality industry (Morosan and Bowen, 2022).…”