The thesis analyzes the process of change in public finances management cycles (PFM cycle) in the country's public sector, using an institutional sociology approach applied to the study of organizations. Recent legal changes propose new rules for the PFM cycle that require a change in institutional budgetary logic. This is the case with the introduction of performance based budgeting (PBB) in the country, the logic of which conflicts with a budgetary logic based on inputs. Since the logics are in conflict and challenge the status quo, the actors in organizations come to resist the proposals. Consequently, a strategy to implement such reforms ends up encompassing scope adjustments, revisions to adoption deadlines, and restrictions arising from the lack of municipal structure. Contrary to this justification, the thesis proposes that the low adoption of these reforms stems from resistance of an institutional nature, in which the conflicting institutional logics reduce the chances of adoption of such practices, leading to ceremonial use when there is a source of external coercion. This resistance would be reduced if those of greatest importance in an organization perceived favorable aspects of the reform and thus would come to support the new practice, above all if windows of opportunity to raise the awareness of others in the organization were created. A mixed method approach was employed. It began with a qualitative approach, by observing participants in a city hall of a large municipality in the state of São Paulo. A participant observation articulated with an institutional theory gave rise to the hypotheses that greater renewal for teams that act in planning and budgeting would increase the chances of adopting PBB, especially with the presence of shock that questions the way in which an organization has been operating. The hypotheses were tested quantitatively using performance based budgeting data from 639 municipalities in the state of São Paulo from 2011-2015. The results indicate that, for a set of São Paulo municipalities, a crisis ended up consolidating traditional budgetary logic, supposedly due to pressure to achieve short-term results. We also observed a generalized presence of ceremonial practice of PBB at some level. In some cases, more than 40% of the indicators and targets do not possess informational value. Finally, based on observations of this use of ceremonial practice, we discuss some factors that would have potentiated the low level of institutionalization of the new budgetary practice. Among these values, the PBB adoption model since 2002 and an absence of a sponsor for the reform mean that there is no process of diffusion, thus weakening a theorization stage in favor of the reform.