Towards effective management of faith-based organisations: A case study of baptist relief and development agency.
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Date
August, 2010.
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Abstract
This research intends to discover if faith- based organizations are being managed in accordance with both conventional and biblical management principles to ensure sustainability and growth. To achieve our purpose for the research we investigated why faith-based organizations are not able to attract and retain quality human resource, and also cannot attract funding for the projects they have embarked on to meet the socio-economic needs of the communities. The Baptist Relief and Development Agency (BREDA) of the Ghana Baptist Convention was used as a case study and, as such, critically examined. The research revealed a poor human resource management and development at BREDA in terms of recruitment, compensation or remuneration, and training. This has happened because BREDA has no staff conditions of service of its own and has to depend on the service conditions of the Ghana Baptist Convention. It was also discovered that BREDA does not manage its own finances because it is seen as a unit of the Ghana Baptist Convention. The staff of BREDA are not well paid which is a disincentive and has led to a high labour turn-over. Since the Ghana Baptist Convention recruits staff for BREDA based on its financial position, there is understaffing at the project sites. Another problem is that of spreading projects across the country which has made supervision difficult for the Director and the programmes’ officer, both of whom are based at the head office in Accra. This thesis argues that in order to effectively manage faith-based organizations like BREDA, they should be devoid of undue denominational influence and be managed in accordance with basic management principles and practices that have their parallels in the Bible. BREDA as an organization should be autonomous to ensure effective and efficient human resource, project and financial management. This will empower the Director of BREDA to take initiatives and responsibility for such decisions.
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A thesis submitted to the Department of Religious Studies, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy on