Estrutura organizacional, estratégia e desempenho na administração pública: uma análise aplicada à Receita Federal do Brasil

Abstract

Even though organizational performance has inhabited a prominent space in academia for over a century, its application in managerial public administration still lacks updated theoretical and empirical references, especially in the relationship between Organizational Structure and Performance. Therefore, the investigation of the forces that directly or indirectly influence this construct has academic and practical relevance. There is still no clear indication of which aspects of structure influence the performance of public organizations. To produce evidence that helps the development of knowledge on the subject, this dissertation focuses on the case of a continental-sized public agency: The Federal Revenue of Brazil. Thus, the general objective of this study is to explore and test aspects of the relationship between centralization and performance perceived by the agency's employees. The variables observed include degree of participation in decisions, access and level of hierarchical authority, and performance, whose relationship is the focus of this work, as well as the reverberation of centralization in other factors such as standardization, degree of routine tasks, specialization, and on the typology of the latent strategy perceived. To this end, two research approaches were developed, each representing a step towards achieving the general objective. First, a census questionnaire was applied to employees at different hierarchical levels, and the data were analyzed by means of structural equation modeling and the existing relationships among the structure, strategy, and performance constructs, as well as the measurement of the strengths with which these relationships occur. Second, case studies were developed on one-off changes in structure that impacted performance, exploring common intrinsic aspects and involving the same variables as the questionnaire. The results indicate that the high centralization of decision-making power and the fragmentation of execution have a negative impact on performance, with negative reverberations in the evolution of work patterns, inhibition of specialization, and a reactive and passive strategy perceived by the employees. This research is justified by the gap in knowledge about the perception of the levels of organizational structure and its impact on performance in Federal Revenue of Brazil due to the new possibilities of coordination and integration in a virtual networked organizational structure brought by ICT. In particular, the aspect of the evolution of work processes through the promotion of innovations related to greater efficacy and effectiveness of its role in society. So that, its purpose is to apply the knowledge generated in the restructuring of the organ.