Além da função de legitimidade do mercado: estudo de caso das contribuições da contabilidade para o controle social da administração pública no sistema Observatório Social do Brasil

Abstract

In Brazilian media, corruption cases are constantly exposed. In this sense, generally, the purposely public management inefficiency creates a prosperous environment for corruption. This corruption cases generate outrage feelings in several Brazilians, but, at same time, this does not transform into action. That is why it is important to report when this revolt is transformed into action, the Social Observatory of Brazil (SOB) correspond to an action against corruption. The SOB system corresponds to a network of entities that looks for the social control of Public Administration. Seeking to understand the relationship between social control and Accounting, this work has established the main objective of identifying how Accounting can contribute to the dynamics of social control in Public Administration, using the SOB system as a case study. To achieve this objective, the following secondary objectives were developed to: demonstrate the role of accounting class entities in social control; discuss how accounting knowledge is used in social control; describe centralized and decentralized public management models; investigate how social observatories contribute to the social control of Public Administration in the country. Also, a qualitative approach was chosen because this is a descriptive and exploratory study. Besides, a questionnaire and in-depth interviews were used to collect data about the SOB system and its activities. The results of the questionnaire served as a basis, alongisde with the “snowball” sampling technique, for the selection of institutions affiliated to the SOB system to participate in the in-depth interview. After collecting and analyzing the content of the interviews, the findings indicate that Accounting can contribute to the social control of Public Administration through professional accounting entities that: support the creation of Observatories; encourage the participation of accountants in social control activities; prove space with no cost; encourage the improvement of public transparency by raising awareness among accountants. In addition, Accounting contributes to social control by providing: a system that characterizes public expenditure; information for building indicators; technique for analyzing tax documents. Furthermore, the results indicate that public spaces are generally not favorable to citizen social control over the State.