Risk management in the Brazilian public sector: a new logic of accountability?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1982-6486.rco.2020.163964Keywords:
Risk management, Accountability, Internal controls, Internal audit, Public sectorAbstract
Different governments have adopted risk management as part of a new standard of excellence for internal controls. Risk-based regulation, however, implies on the articulation of a new logic of accountability, one where control bodies have to redefine the limits of public action and responsibility. The consequences of this agenda in the Brazilian context, however, remain underexplored. This paper examines the challenges of implementing risk management in a state government, in terms of its impact on the forms of answerability and enforcement of public agents. Based on 13 rounds of interviews and participant observation, findings show that, while risk management served to legitimate the expansion of internal controls, the assimilation of this innovation faces limitations regarding the professional identity of auditors, the low relevance of internal controls, and conflicts of disclosure of strategic risks. The paper contributes by proposing that risk management has limited capacity to address systemic risks in the public sector, when decoupled from a reformulation of incentives for making structural problems transparent.
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