Desenvolvimento sustentável e trabalho precário no relato integrado da Natura: pensando um contrarrelato

Abstract

The concept of sustainability in business discourses has been characterized as an ideological movement aimed at legiti-mizing the power of large corporations. In 2010, the International Integrated Reporting Committee (IIRC) was launched with the aim of creating a globally accepted framework for accounting for sustainability. As legitimacy theories point that communication plays a central role in legitimation processes, in this article we compare the representation of the workforce of cosmetics sellers in 2015 corporate reports from Natura Cosméticos S/A, one of the Brazilian corporations most engaged in IIRC’s initiatives, to the results of independent academic studies. With this, we propose a counter-accounting, i.e. a discourse about organizational performance produced by actors who are independent from the organization’s management. Corroborating the understanding of the IIRC as an inter-organizational enterprise to legitimize a business-friendly definition of sustainability, we argue that in its integrated report Natura celebrates the exploitation of precarious work as a contribution to sustainable development