Processos digitais na prefeitura de Santos

O presente trabalho foi realizado com o intuito de identificar e acompanhar os principais desafios que a Prefeitura Municipal de Santos, por intermédio de sua Secretaria de Gestão, encontrou na implantação de seu programa de digitalização de processos administrativos. Realizaram-se entrevistas em campo com quatro visitas à cidade de Santos para verificar a formulação e aplicação concreta do programa, pesquisa de material legal, especialmente do Decreto e da Portaria Municipal que criaram efetivamente a obrigação para que todos os servidores do Município elaborem determinados processos administrativos de maneira unicamente digital. Ainda, outra base de pesquisa foi a comparação da experiência com as de outros entes, poderes e órgãos públicos brasileiros que já adotaram os processos administrativos eletrônicos. A metodologia utilizada para realizar o trabalho deu-se por meio de visitas in loco e entrevistas com os gestores responsáveis e, também, com os usuários do sistema, visando coletar informações a respeito do programa – inclusive seu histórico referente à fase de formulação –, bem como perceber as impressões e expectativas dos servidores. Devido à relevância e atualidade do tema, analisou-se se o programa poderia ser considerado uma política pública, o que resultou numa conclusão positiva, com desdobramentos potenciais para a discussão da implantação e modernização de processos no âmbito da administração pública. Buscou-se, por fim, contribuir com o município para a construção de uma metodologia de avaliação mediante a utilização de indicadores, por meio dos quais torna-se possível medir a eficiência e o impacto da nova sistemática.

Winning in Brazil: how institutional voids affect the entry decision making process of foreign venture capital firms coming to Brazil

The master thesis for the achievement of the academic status master of science in international management (MPGI) will aim to solve the research question of how institutional voids affect the entry decision-making process of foreign venture capital firms coming to Brazil. This is a timely matter since in the past years there has been a sudden eruption of foreign VC involvement in Brazil. Based on the actionable framework by Khanna and Palpeu (2010) we conducted quantitative as well as qualitative research with two sets of interview partners in a two-phase analysis. We interviewed experts from VC firms, foreign VC firms based in Brazil and perspective VC firms that are looking to come to Brazil. We started with the former, derived lessons learned and analyzed how they affect the latter in reaching a decision. As we expected we found that depending on the industry that ventures are in, institutional voids can either pose an opportunity or a threat and hence attract or push away potential VC firms entering Brazil. Opportunities exist especially when exploiting institutional voids, for example through ventures in the marketplace efficiency. Threats are posed by investments in for instance hard infrastructure, where the economic, political and judicial systems as well as corruption and bureaucracy play demanding roles.

The revenge of the market on the rentiers why neo-liberal reports of the end of history turned out to be premature

Starting from the perspective of heterodox Keynesian-Minskyian-Kindlebergian financial economics, this paper begins by highlighting a number of mechanisms that contributed to the current financial crisis. These include excess liquidity, income polarisation, conflicts between financial and productive capital, lack of intelligent regulation, asymmetric information, principal-agent dilemmas and bounded rationalities. However, the paper then proceeds to argue that perhaps more than ever the ‘macroeconomics’ that led to this crisis only makes analytical sense if examined within the framework of the political settlements and distributional outcomes in which it had operated. Taking the perspective of critical social theories the paper concludes that, ultimately, the current financial crisis is the outcome of something much more systemic, namely an attempt to use neo-liberalism (or, in US terms, neo-conservatism) as a new technology of power to help transform capitalism into a rentiers’ delight. And in particular, into a system without much ‘compulsion’ on big business; i.e., one that imposes only minimal pressures on big agents to engage in competitive struggles in the real economy (while inflicting exactly the opposite fate on workers and small firms). A key component in the effectiveness of this new technology of power was its ability to transform the state into a major facilitator of the ever-increasing rent-seeking practices of oligopolistic capital. The architects of this experiment include some capitalist groups (in particular rentiers from the financial sector as well as capitalists from the ‘mature’ and most polluting industries of the preceding techno-economic paradigm), some political groups, as well as intellectual networks with their allies – including most economists and the ‘new’ left. Although rentiers did succeed in their attempt to get rid of practically all fetters on their greed, in the end the crisis materialised when ‘markets’ took their inevitable revenge on the rentiers by calling their (blatant) bluff.