Novo olhar sobre a qualidade da informação contábil: a ótica dos observatórios sociais

Abstract

Brazil is in the process of converging to international accounting standards applied to the public sector. These standards aim to produce high-quality accounting information for decisionmaking and accountability purposes and establish that citizens are among the primary users. Citizens integrate a diversified group of users with different knowledge and information needs. A case in which citizens may need the accounting information is when performing social control over the activities of the public sector. In particular, the Observatório Social do Brasil (Social Observatory of Brazil) is a network composed of institutions that are dedicated to social control and are the focus of this work. The main theoretical aspect chosen for understand the behavior of entities dedicated to social control was the model of the New Public Service, which highlights a social participation in public management. From this point of view, the objective is to identify which are the conditioning factors for the quality of the accounting information from a perspective of the social observatories. To achieve this goal, the methodology involved the accomplishment of two stages of semi-structured interviews and the application of an electronic questionnaire for members of social observatories. The main results contradict the literature of the quality of government information disclosure. While this literature is basically concerned with the content available and the capacity and quality of the technological structure, this research has reached the result that the quality of accounting information depends mainly on the interest and mobilization of citizens and the government. The conclusion was that Accounting is of great importance to social observers. The results are from the point of view that information is more than the provision of documents, but that involves dialogue, permission and visualization. For the qualitative characteristics of accounting information, observers are primarily concerned with understanding and obtaining information in a timely manner. As a suggestion of future studies, it indicates the investigation of what allows the accomplishment of the activities of other entities and persons directed to the social control. The Observatório Social do Brasil network has grown and occupied a position relevant to social control, but it is not the only one. Another possibility to broaden the horizons of the quality of accounting information is to investigate if any other entity that is dedicated to social control makes use of the financial statements and for what purpose.