A construção social da sustentabilidade empresarial : sentidos, agências e práticas

Abstract

The central theme of this dissertation is to identify how sustainability practices are implemented in different business organizations. How do ideas about sustainability affect the processes of developing and implementing social and environmental practices? Are these practices based on sustainability models, norms, and standards, or do they diverge from them? How can the current systematization and standardization of sustainability be compatible with all organizations, considering that each one has different realities, objectives, conditions, and limitations? In order to answer these questions, a multiple case study was conducted with the participation of two companies in Belo Horizonte, both active in the construction of effective socio-environmental practices. Based on empirical data, it was possible to conclude that corporate sustainability is contingent and related to a very relevant dimension of agency. Despite external pressures acting on business organizations that can generate an isomorphic process of sustainability, each agent develops unique strategic responses in return, responses that may constitute an attempt at institutional change. In the context of this research, this institutional change means the creation of new practices that diverge from the concept of weak sustainability, widely defended today, which ends up valuing the economic dimension to the detriment of the social and environmental dimensions. We will demonstrate that this change is related to institutional work, discussed here through the prisms of entrepreneurship and institutional activism, which in turn were identified in the performance profiles of the participating companies. Based on the analyses and the idea of contingent sustainability, we conclude that there are different levels of socio-environmental performance by companies, ranging from greenwashing practices to an expanded governance model, which involves territorial integration in a dynamic of value co-production and co-responsibility with local actors.