Investigating the Effect of Organizational Factors on Financial Discipline in the Public Sector

Despite the significance of the issue of financial indiscipline, few scientific studies have investigated the motivational, voluntary, emotional, and cognitive factors affecting the actions of managers and employees within organizations. Financial discipline in an organization is influenced by organizational and environmental factors and the present study seeks to study the impact of organizational factors on such concepts.

This study is an applied and mixed methods exploratory study.  In its qualitative part, the conceptual model of the research was extracted by extensively reviewing the extant literature. The localization and theoretical saturation of the research model were then done by conducting in-depth interviews and applying the thematic analysis method The statistical population in the qualitative part of this study included experts in public finance who were selected using a targeted sampling strategy and theoretical sampling method. In the quantitative section, based on the data collected by the questionnaire and operationalization of the research model, the fit goodness of the research model was determined using the structural equation modeling (SEM). The statistical population included the managers of the auditing organization, the Iranian Association of Certified Public Accountants, and the General Inspection Organization of Iran (GIO). The questionnaire was distributed electronically and 93 usable questionnaires were collected.

Model fitting proved that the components of financial and credit resources, structure, and management style have a direct and significant effect on financial discipline. Also, the greatest impact on financial discipline was made by the indicators of receiving credits in a regular and scheduled manner, the absence of financial restrictions, the quality of management controls, the existence of written and detailed job descriptions, process reforms, and seriousness in dealing with violations.

Financial discipline is a manageable phenomenon through some organizational factors, namely financial and credit resources, organizational structure, and management style. In financial and credit resources, regular receipt of credits reduces the need to provide resources in various ways, alleviates the problem of excess or deficit of funds, thus preventing the transfer of program credits, and ultimately reduces indiscipline. One of the salient features of an efficient management control system is its ability to maintain present and future controls. These capabilities reduce the likelihood of financial indiscipline by anticipating and detecting it in a timely manner. Establishing an effective system of internal controls reduces the risk of financial irregularities. The existence of transparent processes and procedures increases the level of financial discipline of organizations by reducing the ambiguity in their process of providing services as well as their ability to monitor the budget. Finally, seriousness in dealing with violations strengthens financial discipline by increasing the cost of committing violations.