Permanência e entrincheiramento na carreira de servidores públicos: um estudo de caso de uma agência reguladora de serviços

Abstract

The present study analyzes how the permanence of civil servants of a Regulatory Agency is affected by the three dimensions of entrenchment, which had its basis built on the studies of authors Carson, Carson and Badeian (1995) and later updated by Rodrigues (2009). Such dimensions consist of occupational immobility due to the investments made, the emotional costs linked to change and the perception of lack of alternatives outside their field of work. The objective of the study aimed to characterize the organizational entrenchment of the servers of the Regulatory Agency, and the specific objectives: seeks to identify how entrenchment is present through the perspective of adjustment to social position, impersonal bureaucratic arrangements and the limitation of alternatives. The research brings an introduction of the activities performed by Regulatory Agencies, their functions and which aspects fostered their emergence, showing their importance to the social and political context. It was contextualizing the work of civil servants present in these Regulatory Agencies, for such, a research was carried out to understand the trajectory of civil servants, through their insertion in the career, the investments made by them, as well as their perception about the alternatives outside their field of work. This research is characterized as qualitative and descriptive, and its results were obtained through semi-structured interviews with 14 civil servants of a Regulatory Agency in the state of Ceará, Brazil. To support this study, we conducted a bibliographic research about the origins of entrenchment and its development in the organizational environment, also pointing out the main currents and authors of commitment and how they correlate. The results obtained point out that the employees are entrenched in different levels in the three dimensions studied, especially in the dimension that refers to material loss, where the abdication of the career is seen as a way to cease the benefits obtained, in which the bureaucratic arrangements are impersonal. Moreover, it was observed that besides the characterization of entrenchment, it was possible to observe aspects related to organizational commitment in which affective and instrumental aspects are present in the results obtained.