Evaluation of the presence on the Internet of the portuguese Private Institutions of Social Solidarity

Abstract

The context of decentralization of State functions and funding of Nonprofit Organizations, whose activity replaces the direct intervention of the State in meeting the citizens' needs, is in line with the New Public Management (NPM) and Public Governance. In Portugal, in order to make the management of public resources more accountable and transparent, legal regulations on financial disclosure have emerged, and, recently, the Private Institutions of Social Solidarity (IPSS), through the Portuguese Decree-Law No. 172-A/2014 (2014) are required to publish the financial reporting on their websites.
Notwithstanding the fact that this requirement must only be strictly fulfilled in 2016, the IPSS have been aware of it since November 2014. Given the diffusion of innovations and the institutional theory, based on coercive isomorphism, the IPSS may have already created the conditions to fulfill this requirement.
Given this context, this work intends to address the following problem: Do the IPSS have conditions to comply with the requirement of publishing financial reporting on their institutional website?
This research is an analytical study and follows an inductive approach. Methodologically, it combines quantitative and qualitative research methods.
Besides the aspects that the disclosure index allows to measure and assess concerning the presence of IPSS on the Internet, this research will mainly allow us to verify, up to the date of this study, about two months prior to the first mandatory publishing financial reporting on their websites, whether the IPSS have the necessary conditions to meet this legal requirement.
The results show that there is very limited presence of IPSS on the Internet, the websites do not meet maturity level one and are little sophisticated, and the IPSS which disclose financial information on their websites are a small minority.