For the past two decades, the public sector has been under pressure for improving its performance and showing more transparency and assessment results. Historically, the Brazilian public sector has developed a departmental and bureaucratic structure, which makes it difficult to coordinate activities and reduces the efficiency and effectiveness of its services. In face of this reality, some institutions in the Brazilian public sector have searched for improvements in their modus operandi. In this context, the objective of the present paper is to propose a process improvement model for Brazilian Public Institutions of Undergraduate Education (PIUE) based on a multiple case study. Data were collected through direct observation, documental analysis, and semi-structured interviews. Considering that there are few academic studies on process improvement in the Brazilian public sector, the results obtained in this work bring contribution to theory since they enclose specific aspects of the public sector and their influence on improvement programs. Moreover, given the major need for improvement of the processes in this sector, the cases description and results analysis present practical application since they provide a base for future research.
Process improvement; Administrative processes; Public sector; Undergraduate education
