Evidenciação de princípios de governança nos relatórios de auditoria elaborados pelo órgão de controle interno da Marinha do Brasil

Abstract

Internal control is associated to organizational governance. In the Brazilian public administration, it is incumbent upon Executive, Legislative and Judiciary to maintain a system of integrated internal control, as stated in the Federal Constitution. Control issues relating to governance are grounded in Agency Theory, whereby the relationship between principal and agent is marked by asymmetric information and interest conflicts. This study aims to investigate whether governance principles are disclosed in the audit reports prepared by the Brazilian Navy internal control agency. This is a descriptive, documentary and ex post facto research, supported by the case study method in CCIMAR, the Brazilian Navy Internal Control Center. Due to the amount of material available at CCIMAR, data collection has been limited to the examination of audit reports relating to managerial assessment as of 2012; audited units were previously selected by the National Audit Court (TCU). In 2012, CCIMAR has produced six audit reports on managerial assessment, representing the empirical evidence to be treated in the present research. In order to guide the investigation, a reference framework was created that synthesized governance principles recurrent in the following studies: Cadbury Committee (1992); Nolan Committee (1995); The Netherlands Ministry of Finance Timmers (2000); IFAC (2001); ANAO (2003); OECD (2004); and IBGC (2009). Four principles were selected to be investigated, namely Accountability, Fairness, Integrity and Transparency, which were associated, respectively, to the keywords accounts presentation , fair treatment , trustworthiness of information / data and availability / disclosure of information / data , defined according to the contexts of meanings appearing in the reference framework. Those principles and keywords were taken to characterize the audit reports and were then treated via a quanti-qualitative approach. Upon checking occurrences of principles and keywords in sampled reports, findings indicated that: (1) the Accountability principle was associated to meeting deadlines and legal formalities for public accounts presentation; (2) the Fairness principle was evidenced, essentially, in the internal perspective of audited units, being perceived in recommendations contemplating the more consistent and effective acting of administration boards; (3) Integrity emerged in reports as a personal attribute ( moral integrity ) of public agents as well as a necessary characteristic of information reported in the documents issued by public bodies; and (4) Transparency was mentioned as the principle helping decrease informational asymmetry between stakeholders, allowing them access to relevant information, e. g. the use of public resources for Brazilian Navy organizations.