THE CONTROLLERSHIP IN MUNICIPAL PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS: A CASE STUDY

Abstract

With the aim of improving public administration and offering more transparency in the actions of the Municipal Executive Branch of a city in the State of Amazonas, the name and the duties of a body previously known as General Audit of the Municipal District, was changed to General Controllership of the Municipal District. In view of the changes which have occurred in the Municipal Administration resulting from the new guidelines assigned to it, this article aims at identifying whether the practices performed by the General Controllership of the studied Municipal District are similar to the duties of the controllership usually found in literature and assess the degree of implementation of such duties. To achieve said objectives, an exploratory survey was carried out whose approach features a qualitative focus through a case study. A questionnaire to be filled out by the main managers of the body under study was used to collect data. The results have shown that there is a distance between the duties of the controllership foreseen in literature and the practice of the surveyed public entity. On the other hand, it has been observed that there is certain knowledge about the controllership’s activities and the intentions of change in the organizational culture.