Essay: Accountability Of NGOs In UAE - Challenges And Solutions.

Challenges of Ensuring Accountability in NGOs

Discuss about the Effectiveness and Accountability of NGO UAE.

NGOs in UAE are deemed to have an important role in the nation. Accountability of these non-governmental organizations are gradually turning out to be vital issue within the developmental arena. The effectiveness of NGOs can be increased by means of enhanced accountability (Almatrooshi, Hussain and Ajmal 2017). The current research is focused on dealing with vital issues that considers the ways in which these non-governmental organizations are ensuring accountability to all its stakeholders. NGOs within UAE have indicated a considerable success over the past few years and despite of considerable achievements, these non-government organizations faced challenges from different government bodies including politicians, business community, religious groups along with civil society. For its reason accountability of NGOs has turned out to be a vital concern (Dixon, Bhuiyan and Üstüner 2018). The fraud along with the corruptions scandals over the past few years that has increased public awareness along with demand for the accountability for all the kinds of companies along with this demand this is important that the NGOs must demonstrate their vigilant efforts towards accountability.

Most of the NGOs in UAE employ indigenous employees whose definitions regarding corruptions is deemed to be different (Dorai 2017). This non-governmental organizations must experience several cultural challenges for maintaining suitable structures of internal control which prevent along with detecting corruption and fraud in the company. Several western donors along with stakeholders demand financial accountability along with documentation indicating compliance with the mission of NGOs. Considering the same, whether such cases the NGOs are decreasing the fraud that can remain unreported so as not to negatively affect donations as a result regarding fraud reporting (Duffy and Alkazemi 2017). Such absences regarding accountability along with violations of internal control that invariably resulted in slippery slope of additional abuses by others all through the corrupt organizations along with participating government. The liberalization within government facilitates in generating several challenges NGOs face concerned with corruption within field nations all through the world (El-Aswad 2015).

Following are the research questions that are deemed to be answered trough carrying out investigation on non-governmental organizations in UAE:

• Are the NGO’s effective within the UAE?
• Are the NGOs within UAE accountable in dealing with the social causes faced by the nations?
• Are the NGOs playing a vital role within development of the UAE nations?

There is direct relationship between internal control issues and fraud concepts. According to Almatrooshi, Hussain and Ajmal (2017), the cost of weakness or absence in internal control and auditing could be likened to the cost of no education. With the help of principles related to internal control, there is direct association between effective corporate governance and internal controls and between the inverse of weal corporate governance and internal controls. In addition, it helps in suggesting the organization about the purpose, size, budget, location, life cycle stage and operating environment. This would have direct effect on the effectiveness of the structure of internal control. However, there is not much research on the systems of internal control about the enterprise management; adequate research is from the perspective of the auditor, instead of management perspective.

Impacts of Corruption, Fraud, and Internal Control Issues on NGOs

In the words of Azar and Raouf (2017), internal control knowledge is a significant component influencing the management welfare, customers, corporate directors, staffs, suppliers and society. A suitable process of internal control is crucial to manage majority of the information for aiding in the process of decision-making along with protecting the assets of the organization. In addition, it is significant to understand the influence of internal control on the plans, actions and decisions of the management. Furthermore, it has been found that there is significant contribution of the external dynamics like customers, suppliers, location, organizational size, organizational purpose, environment and event on the internal control system. Thus, each item has continued in driving the circle of management planning, stakeholder feedback and decision-making procedures. Hence, it could be stated that every line item depicts a single fact of the internal control system.

There have been costs of around $600 billion in a year pertaining to fraud and corruption every year (Balasubramanian and Shukla 2017). According to the data of the World Bank, the global public officials obtain more than $1 trillion in the form of bribes every year, which has risen tenfold since 2001. For developing nations such as UAE, in which fraud and corruption could result in the waste of investment funds and aids, there are substantial projections of the losses; even though the documentation is not made easily. Even though there are significant investments related to billions of dollars every year, corruption is adjudged as the significant reason for the failure of numerous development programs in the Middle East.

It is not easy to ascertain the exact cost of corruption and fraud, since fraud is a criminal act depending on concealment and the organizations often do not have any idea of their victimizations. Hence, the frauds are not detected or even if they are detected, such frauds have occurred for numerous years (Batniji et al. 2014).

The increasing corruption volume via money laundering and the increasing demands for public accountability of funds have dragged the accounting profession in the middle of fighting corruption (Duffy and Alkazemi 2017). However, the combination of the various financial statements and auditing knowledge having investigative skills is essential to identify financial crimes. The non-profit organizations require determining whether the organizations need to adopt voluntarily the governance principles, which are included in SOX. The UAE government is involved in supporting efforts related to anti-corruption by developing laws categorizing money laundering in the form of severely punishable crime (Dixon, Bhuiyan and Üstüner 2018). Thus, the accounting profession is called upon in developing counter methods in denying money laundering and their accomplices’ opportunities in legitimizing their illegal gains. However, numerous money launderers utilize legal businesses and NGOs in the form of conduit for the trained funds.

Research Questions and Design

Latif and Williams (2017) indicated that the NGOs return out to be a vital constituency along with having an important role in order to remote sustainable development and for supporting the activities in order to support the activities of the development aid agencies. These reasechers also indicated that governments and aid agencies all through the UAE work mostly through the help of NGOs in order to reach their targets. This is due to the reason that these are generally deemed to be highly effective than governments in order to attain emergency relief support along with implementing certain development products. Dixon and Üstüner (2018) revealed that hat the NGOs are effective and accountable within the UAE as they act as multi-layer management structure in developing governments confusion along with corruption in the government. These reasechers also stated that NGOs are effective in capitalizing on the emotional motivations of individuals centered towards certain issues that is driven by imperatives regarding justice, morality along with charity.

From the above discussion, it has been found that with the help of principles related to internal control, there is direct association between effective corporate governance and internal controls and between the inverse of weal corporate governance and internal controls. In addition, it helps in suggesting the organization about the purpose, size, budget, location, life cycle stage and operating environment. This would have direct effect on the effectiveness of the structure of internal control. However, there is not much research on the systems of internal control about the enterprise management; adequate research is from the perspective of the auditor, instead of management perspective. With the help of principles related to internal control, there is direct association between effective corporate governance and internal controls and between the inverse of weal corporate governance and internal controls.

In addition, it helps in suggesting the organization about the purpose, size, budget, location, life cycle stage and operating environment. This would have direct effect on the effectiveness of the structure of internal control. However, there is not much research on the systems of internal control about the enterprise management; adequate research is from the perspective of the auditor, instead of management perspective.

Research design of quantitative analysis is chosen in order to evaluate the effectiveness along with accountability of NGOs within UAE (Dixon and Üstüner 2018). Quantitative research design is selected for the cause that this this can support in attaining some vital information on the human viewpoints n account to certain vital data. Additionally, a huge sample size is selected in this research as this is expected to be effective for quantitative research design.

Data Collection and Analysis

Questionnaire is considered being effective research instrument in this instigation in order to attain some reliable along with valid data (Faour 2017). By means of using this research instrument all the survey participants will get capable to offer responses. This can be analyzed in investigating effectiveness along with accountability of NGOs or non-government organizations within UAE. The questionnaire that will be developed for the survey participants is observed to include open as well as close ended questionnaire (Farouky 2016). The research instrument is considered to be employed in account to the fact that this might act as highly effective process of survey in order to obtain considerable information from a huge population of sample. This questionnaire will be offered to its respondents through implementation of social media as well as personalized e-mails (World Health Organization 2015).

Important data that is gathered through implementation of questionnaire survey process will be evaluated through employing some important tools of strategic analysis (Latif and Williams 2017). Application of MS excel is considered to be used and this is related on the collected responses from the questionnaire technique. In addition, in order to analyze the gathered data, regression as well as correlation analysis will be conduced for attain answer for all the questions in this exploration of accountability as well as effectiveness of the non-government organizations or NGOs in UAE. The outcome that will bed collected from the paper will indicate that it is represented in the form of tables and graphs (Mackey and Gas 2015). This can further support the researcher in evaluating certain human responses on the current research.

Validity along with reliability of the data gathered can be made sure through using certain important website sources that includes recently updated data on accountability and effectiveness of NGOs within the nation UAE (Mansour 2016). In addition, for evaluating quantitative data Pearson correlation test that can be carried out that can make sure of the validity and reliability of data gathered from quantitative data collected by means of survey technique.

The process of simple random sampling is deemed to be employed in the current reassert within which around 31 managers from the UAE non-government organizations or NGOs are selected in UAE from a bigger survey population (Taylor, Bogdan and DeVault 2015). The method of survey will be employed in the recent research for the reason that it provides with equal chances to every respondent in getting selected for the method of survey. This is among the major cause for which this sampling method is used to gather relevant samples size from a large population (Thomas 2016). In this condition, analysis of quantitative data needs a larger sample size in attaining increased effectiveness along with accountability within NGOs in UAE.

Solutions and Recommendations

The questionnaire that will be offered to all the survey participants those are involved for answering the questionnaire includes close along with certain open-ended questions. Segment A of such questionnaire is focused on gathering important data in the area of understanding the demographic profile of the respondents (Smith 2015). Segment B of this questionnaire will include questions related with the accountability of NGOs or non-government organizations within UAE. Moreover, the segment C of this questionnaire will also encompass relevant questions regarding effectiveness of these organizations within UAE along with relevant recommendations provided by the selected managers.

Secondary data collection technique is considered to be highly effective in consideration to the selection of relevant secondary sources. The chosen secondary resources those are chosen through which important information regarding effectiveness and accountability of NGOs in UAE can be gathered is through valid sources (Panneerselvam 2014). These includes certain government websites, journals as well as NGO development and accountability publications from non-government organizations in UAE.

The variables that are considered to be selected in the exploration of accountability and effectiveness of NGO or non-government organizations in UAE includes dependent and independent variables (McCusker and Gunaydin 2015). Position of NGOs or non-government organizations in UAE is considered to be the dependent variable. In addition, accountability of NGOs in UAE and effectiveness of NGOs within UAE are observed to be the independent variables.

The findings after investigating the effectiveness and accountability of NGOs within UAE is deemed to reveal that NGO beaureu of UAE has a broad regulatory framework range along with techniques that can oversee these non-government agencies (Azar and Raouf 2017). Despite of having a properly structured legal framework, these non-government organizations are dealing with the issue of limited human resource along with different logistic supports. Such limitations affect these NGOs to maintain a close focus on their activities. However, the research will have certain implications in revealing that in comparison to bearer the donors are more tactical in making sure of their accountability (Balasubramanian and Shukla 2017). These donors offer more elaborate guidelines and attempts to maintain high follow up on its activities which can make sure that NGOs attempts to implement projects or programs based on donors’ prescription. The findings of the research are also intended to reveal that the financial edge of the donors has an important role on describing donor-NGO relations.

The research will also explain that an increasing public awareness along with scrutiny for profit along with nonprofit organizations that have paced the expectation along with demand for accountability of organizational revenues, expenditures and funding (Batniji et al. 2014). This is associated directly with leaders and boards that runs the organizations. Rather than for-profit entities that gather their primary revenues from sales of services and goods, NGOs attain a high number of revenues from donations along with contributions from the individuals along with government entities and corporations. In case the funding is dried up, it might indicate that the NGOs might no longer be fiscally viable that can result in operations of the non-profit organizations to operates (Dixon, Bhuiyan and Üstüner 2018). The paper will also reveal that there must be increased accountability along with controls for informing stakeholders the NGOs are diligently.

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