A comparative study: social balance of the municipalities of São José – Santa Catarina and Florianópolis – Santa Catarina

Abstract

Social Balance emerges from citizens' awareness of the importance of the social role of organizations which do not sustain themselves for lack of display to the community of information beyond their employments, products and services. Thus the relevance of Social Balance stems from its being a cost-benefit measurement tool in the development of the activities of such entities. In this context, society starts asking questions such as the following: Is there any aggression to the environment? Are there adequate working conditions? Is there any value added to the economy? In a like manner, Municipal Administration becomes concerned with adding value to its management, not only by means of visible works, but also via the construction of an information system able to provide the citizen with accounting information as well as with economic, financial and social data providing visibility to the work carried out. Social Balance emerges as a proposal to the public sector, mainly to the Municipalities, as a way of generating information to which internal and external users to not have access in traditional accounting displays. The aim of this paper is to compare the criteria informing the Social Balances of the Municipalities of São José - SC, Brazil and Florianópolis - SC, Brazil for the exercise of 2001. Techniques such as bibliographic research and a case study were used in the investigation. In general lines, the Municipalities of São José and Florianópolis proved to have practiced the same methodology in the construction of their Social Balances for the period. The main differences emerge in the forms of displaying social attitudes, in the descriptors and respective weights for satisfaction assessment, in the distribution of employees along functional classes, age groups and employment time, and in the form of distribution of Operational Descriptors, Social and Benefit Descriptors and Richness Distribution. The results obtained demonstrate the importance of information display to public sector managers and society itself.