The discussion on transparency in the public sector has been gaining momentum over the last decade aligned with the emergence of governance theories (Lyrio, Lunkes, & Taliani, 2015). Among the studies related to transparency... [ view full abstract ]
The discussion on transparency in the public sector has been gaining momentum over the last decade aligned with the emergence of governance theories (Lyrio, Lunkes, & Taliani, 2015). Among the studies related to transparency in public entities assesment has been the subject of research of many researchers worldwide (Armstrong, 2011; Caba Pérez & López-Hernández, 2009; Cruz et al., 2015; Cruz et al., 2012; Kristiansen et al., 2009; Lawrence et al., 2013; Meijer, Hart, & Worthy, 2015; Pattaro, Jorge Sá , & Lawrence, 2012). These researchers have important advances in knowledge in the context of the discussion on public transparency, regarding the proposition of transparency assessment models, as well as with respect to the analysis of public entities transparency levels in various spheres and levels of government. Nevertheless, there are still blind spots to be investigated, and among them, the question of the factors that lead to a specific public body to become more transparent is one that deserves a closer look. Some researchers have sought to analyze this issue, as is the case of Benito and Bastida (2009), which sought to investigate the relationship between transparency, fiscal situation and political changes, Bonson et al. (2012) who analyzed the relationship between Web 2.0 usage and corporate transparency levels in municipalities and Mutula and Wamukoya (2009) and Haque (2013) who analyzed the relationship between the use of information and communication technology to strengthen transparency. Despite advances in relation to the discussion of the factors that influence the level of transparency of public bodies, this issue still represents a blind spot. This study seeks to continue the investigation into the factors that contribute to improving the transparency of public bodies, in this case, based on the Upper Echelons Theory (Carpenter, Geletkancz, & Sanders, 2004; Hambrick & Mason, 1984; Hambrick, 2007). This theory state that the profile and characteristics of the upper echelons of organizations influence their performance. In this sense, the objective of this study is to use the characteristics considered by UET as performance drivers and correlate them with the level of transparency achieved by the web portals of Brazilian municipalities with over 100 thousand inhabitants. The study is configured as a descriptive field study. In relation to the procedures for checking the levels of transparency achieved through the portals of the analyzed municipalities will be applied the evaluation model of public management transparency proposed by Lyrio (Lyrio, Lunkes, & Taliani, 2016; Lyrio, 2016) through direct observation . The data relating to the characteristics of the upper echelons are primary data obtained directly from the websites of the ones analyzed. As a result, through a logistic regression (Hosmer, Lemeshow, & Sturdivant, 2000) seek is to identify characteristics of the upper echelons that may explain the levels of transparency achieved by municipalities, as well as identify the most aligned features with a higher level of transparency of the ones analyzed.
