Productivity Antecedents of Brazilian Courts of Justice: Evidence from Justica em Numeros.

AutorLouro, Alamir Costa
CargoReport

Introduction

In the last few decades, the government has given greater importance to management using statistical data as a fundamental tool in its reforms (Moynihan & Hawes, 2012). For Brazilian judiciary organizations in particular, the adoption of indicators has often been encouraged by the National Justice Council (Conselho Nacional de Justica [CNJ]) in the context of its audit reports, which seek to compile data on expenditures, investments, amount of human capital, and information related to judicial processes (CNJ, 2016). In fact, the CNJ resolutions are a fundamental component of these public reforms. Regarding judiciary organizational productivity, a relationship has been commonly assumed between statistical data and improved decision-making and accountability (Oliveira, 2012).

The present paper considers the theoretical bias of the New Public Administration and its orientation towards decision-making based on indicators and outsourcing practices, which is particularly true in the context of Courts of Justice, mainly when taking into account the criticisms of the refractory behavior towards changes in Brazilian judiciary organizations. Such organizations are also traditionally criticized for the inoperability and anachronism of their services, as portrayed by Sadek (2004) in pointing out that this is neither a current observation nor something common only in Brazil. One explanation for these criticisms is the lack of planning of public organizations in general, which has been an important issue for at least five decades. Article six of Decree-Law no. 200 (Decreto-Lei n. 200, 1967) advocates planning as a fundamental national public administration principle, suggesting observation of the efficiency and effectiveness in organizational resource allocation. This Decree-Law is a forerunner of the government management reform that began in the mid-1990s (Bresser-Pereira, 2009), and is relative to New Public Administration reforms. This same author affirms that new management frameworks initially used in private organizations were adapted to the reality of national public administration, aiming to reduce expenses and improve services.

In literature inspired by New Public Administration, however, what is widely adopted either a normative stance - indicating the best practices of possible reforms - or a descriptive stance - presenting the characteristics of some specific reforms (Bresser-Pereira, 2009). With regards to this, the national judiciary is no exception. Currently, as a consequence of research about reforms specifically based on CNJ resolutions, little systematic evidence has been produced on outsourcing and IT investments. Conversely, the present research has produced some empirical evidence on such topics as the association between own and outsourced human capital, IT investments, and productivity in Brazilian Courts of Justice.

In response to the gap in empirical research on the judiciary, and with the same view of Sadek and Oliveira (2012) who call for more research based on statistical indicators in these organizations, the present work adopts a quantitative approach and investigates the possible determinants of national judiciary productivity. More specifically, this paper's objective is to propose and empirically test a model based on public data of the Justica em Numeros CNJ's report using the most primary antecedent for judicial performance: its own and outsourced human capital. Moreover, the motivation of the study to encompass IT Investments is twofold. On the one hand, the public sector underwent significant managerial reforms, and IT Investments represent great expectations for improving the productivity of the national judiciary (Gomes & Guimaraes, 2013). On the other hand, CNJ highlighted these investments as an important part - 25.1% - of the total expenditures of the national judiciary (CNJ, 2016).

The productivity of the courts is complex and can be influenced by different factors. Yeung and Azevedo (2011) have identified that efficient courts are those that best manage their resources. However, there is little empirical research on the influence of each of the resources in Brazilian courts, for example, investments in IT, own and outsourced human capital, and productivity. In this way, the study aims to deepen knowledge on productivity in Public Administration, focusing on data from state courts and providing a model that can interpret the data of such reports.

According to a bibliographical review of national journals, with Qualis B3 ranking or higher, and corroborating the previous work carried out by Akutsu and Guimaraes (2012), judiciary management is considered poorly explored, especially regarding IT investments and outsourcing. This paper aims to increase existing knowledge about IT investment and productivity in order to provide useful indications for these courts' top managers and the legislators of judiciary reforms.

Theoretical Review

Productivity is a multifaceted concept and little explored in the literature on the Brazilian judicial system, due to the difficulty or scarcity of data for analysis. In addition, efficiency and productivity literature focuses on DEA, data envelopment analysis, which takes the basis of a court as a benchmark and makes comparisons across other courts. Although pertinent, the objectives of the research would not be adequate, considering the present focus on the relationship between some latent variables like IT investments and court productivity, as well as distinguishing between own and outsourced human capital.

In order to understand judiciary productivity, it is necessary to know the impact of IT Investments, as well as own and outsourced human capital. This session will present the concepts that will support model structuring to analyze the results from research. This will take place by contextualizing the relationship between judiciary productivity and IT investments and the amount of outsourced and own human capital that is characterized as effective servants, judges, and commissioners.

For an introduction and history on statistical data in the judiciary, we suggest the work of Sadek and Oliveira (2012). Academic papers that address empirical data on the national judiciary have advanced little in analysis, and have given more focus to providing a description of the national scenario (Gomes & Guimaraes, 2013; Nogueira, Oliveira, Vasconcelos, & Oliveira, 2012; Oliveira, 2012), or analyzing state courts (Gomes, Guimaraes, & Akutsu, 2017). Emphasis should be given to Gomes and Guimaraes (2013), who published a bibliometric article on judiciary performance focusing on specific roles judges have, an approach that the present work seeks to overcome. In addition, international literature offers a few empirical works (Beenstock & Haitovsky, 2004; Dimitrova-Grajzl, Grajzl, Sustersic, & Zajc, 2012; Gomes et al., 2017; Ippoliti, Melcarne, & Ramello, 2015; Mitsopoulos & Pelagidis, 2007); however, they provide evidence that is still rather limited, usually circumscribed to economic variables, and sometimes with inconclusive results.

IT Investments

According to Galliers and Leidner (2003), as IT increased its capacity to generate and store information cheaply, its use quickly spread in organizations. Today, with the advent of data warehouses and business intelligence tools and concepts, different hierarchical levels of management can use indicators as a tool for decision-making. The large volume of data produced and processed by the organizations shows the need for storing and analyzing this data to gather better information that allows better decision making. In the context of the judiciary, Peyrache and Zago (2016) studied the inefficiency in Italian courts and identified that technological innovations could increase the efficiency level in the courts.

Caldeira, Serrano, Quaresma, Pedron, and Romao (2012) discuss some controversies regarding IT Investments and assert that in their case study, the relationship between this construct and organizational performance was considered positive. Gomes and Guimaraes (2013) predict that, in general, in the judiciary, the increase in financial resources does not guarantee an increase in performance, an assessment that is supported by Heeley and Jacobson (2008) in private companies, since resources alone would not be able to generate competitive advantages (Bronzo et al., 2013). From this controversy, the present paper launches a partial result that will be studied in the future using other constructs related to IT investment, such as business process automation (Trkman, 2010) and IT corporate governance (Mohamed, 2012).

Amount of Outsourced and Own Human Capital

Human Capital refers to knowledge that is intrinsic to people and which is related to their capacities, skills, experiences, creativity, and innovation (Cassol, Goncalo, & Ruas, 2016). The digital revolution has influenced the way humanity relates to the world and how people access services. Digital services offer ways for people to modify existing processes and adjust data to the needs of society. The electronic judicial process was implemented with the objective of speeding up the services offered by the judiciary. The CNJ aims to computerize the judiciary as a way to respond to the demands of society more productively. However, computerization is the result of dialogue and consensus among legal operators, which may explain the resistance in some IT investments like electronic judicial process. As long as there is not sufficient artificial intelligence to process the actions in the national judiciary, there will be dependence on human...

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