CHAPTER ONE

1.0      INTRODUCTION

1.1      BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Expenditure control or cost control is part of management control process, in every organisation.

This process is very important to any organisation be it profit making organisation or non-profit making organisation. Thus, lack of this practice in any organisation will cause misapplication of cash in cash disbursement process and this will create a very big problem leading the organisation into deficit and at an extreme case, the organisation might wind up. Many researches have been conducted in the reason for winding up of companies and organisation in which lack of expenditure control process had found responsible.

Expenditure control has been defined as the process by which managers utilize effectively and efficiently, the scarce resource in the achievement of the organisational goals. At this juncture, let us look at expenditure and control from separate perspective.

1

Expenditure is the total amount spent on the process of trying to achieve a particular organisational goal. Control means to order, limit, instruct or rule something or someone’s actions. It is used by either government officials or organisation managers to make restrictions on wages increases, immigrate credit and so on (which are all expenditure).

As regards, this research work, which is the comparative study of expenditure control methods in government and privately owned Hospitals, A study of the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital Enugu (UNTH) and Toronto Hospital and Maternity Onitsha; this implies a comparative study of non-profit making organisations, since UNTH is government owned Hospital while Toronto Hospital is privately owned Hospital as a category of profit making organisation. Non-profit making organisations are characterized by the following:

a)  There is neither a conscious profit motive nor an expectation of earning net income.

b)  No profit of any excess of revenue over expenditure is distributed to those who contributed support through taxes and voluntary donations.

2

In profit making organisations, the reverse of these characteristics is the case in the sense that their major objective is to maximize profit and excess of revenue over expenditure are given to the owners of the organisation.

Government owned hospitals pay more attention to services they render to the public, as their major objectives is to provide services that fulfil a social needs for those who do not have the purchasing power to acquire these services themselves. Irrespective of the fact that privately owned hospitals try to render good and quality services to the public, they pay more attention to maximize of profit which their major objective.

Comparative study of expenditure control in Government and privately owned Hospital which is major research question in this research work has to with the different ways and methods by which expenditure is being controlled in each of the hospitals so that they will not run into deficit or liquidations.

According to Johnson (1976), the management control concept which imbibes the expenditure control are the same both in profit oriented and non-profit oriented organisations, but the implication of these concepts

3

differ in important respect. We will want to find out if also the expenditure control methods are the same or differ in the two hospitals under study, owning to the fact that one is profit oriented and the other is non-profit oriented.

1.2   STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The  problems  encountered  by  the  Government  and  privately  owned

Hospitals in expenditure control are as follows:

·        The problem of daily control method and the vote card method. The problem encountered is to know the effective method to use in the two hospitals. Here, the problem encountered is to check whether the daily control method will be efficient and effective in the Government owned hospitals or whether the vote card method is the best.

·        Another problem encountered by the hospitals in expenditure control is the problem of internal control. Internal control is the essential feature of an organisation, be it profit making or non-profit making, and it is expected to be well managed effectively and efficiently. Any

4

problem or limitation of the internal control will pose a problem to the expenditure control of the organisation.

Therefore, the above problems encountered by the two hospitals are the problems of expenditure control methods encountered by the government and privately owned hospitals by the government and privately owned hospitals that attracted the attention of the researcher.

The problem definition in this research work is to investigate and analyse the different ways and methods by which expenditure is controlled in government owned hospitals and privately owned hospitals so that they will not run into deficit and liquidation. As a comparative study, two hospitals has been selected for the study, they are: University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital Enugu (UNTH) for government owned Hospitals, and Toronto Hospital and Maternity Onitsha for privately owned hospitals.

In this research, we study the different methods of expenditure control being adopted by these hospitals and their practical application and their level of effectiveness.

This study will form a basis for our analysis which will help to answer some research questions.

5

1.3   OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

This study is conducted to:

1.   Ascertain the expenditure control method adopted by the government and privately owned hospitals.

2.   Establish whether government and privately owned hospitals are operating the same of different system of accounting.