Rethinking transparency in the social economy in Portugal | Opinion
Currently, the concepts of “Transparency” and “Rendering of Accounts” assume growing visibility in the sector of Social Economy Organizations (OES). Its problematization involves sharing and dialogue between the diversity of perspectives, knowledge and experiences, contexts and positions, in order to obtain a sufficiently representative picture of the complex and multidimensional character of reality. As the Rendering of Accounts is part of Transparency and assuming that it responds, in a tangible way, to a set of actions, policies and practices, before the different external, internal and external parties, it is often associated only with a legal obligation, of a financial nature .
The need for OES to (re)assess and (re)think operating logics and management practices oriented towards greater transparency, guaranteeing organizational legitimacy, is thus at the origin of the project ‘Transparency in Portuguese Social Economy Organizations’ promoted by the Transversal Area of Social Economy of the Portuguese Catholic University – Porto. Between 2019 and 2021, this project should contribute to strengthening the efficiency and effectiveness of OES, redefining transparent accountability practices, in which several questions are important, including: with which lens(s) do we look at reality? Reflecting on and debating the themes of Transparency and Accountability came to recognize that there is a diversity of conceptual frameworks, which are reflected in different and often ambiguous practices. In this sense, the concept of accountability (transparent) is broad, it is not watertight, and therefore incorporates different and new interpretations and dimensions of analysis, according to the starting points for its exploration and questioning.
Which led us, then, to another question: how to recognize different places and times of participation? In a close articulation between an academy and representatives of the Portuguese OES, it was necessary to put into dialogue individual and daily organizational knowledge and experiences, which challenged us to rethink perspectives and positions and to recreate spaces of plural participation. This care and commitment enabled the joint construction of an Accountability Mechanism for the sector.
Upstream, however, we struggled with the question: what transparent account distribution mechanism can we imagine to (re) feed learning and transformative actions? For two years, we then imagined and developed, critically, collaboratively and with an exploratory nature, a transparent Accountability Mechanism, with the purpose of enabling an organizational self-diagnosis of transparent accountability practices, with recommendations, assumed as opportunities for improvement and institutions for critical decision-making on the subject.
From the questions and concerns experienced in this project, we learned that rethinking Transparency in the Social Economy in Portugal requires a collective re-creation of places and times for meeting(s), problematization and active listening, experimentation, creativity, feedback, collaborative knowledge production, to redefine OES practices and learning processes around transparent accountability, seen as having the potential for personal, organizational and social transformation.