A busca da legitimidade das empresas com atividades extrativas: investigação de relatórios de sustentabilidade do setor mineral brasileiro

Abstract

Mining is one of the most ancient executed by man as a source of survival and production of social goods and industrial products. However, it has been one of the least accepted within the new conceptual framework of sustainable development. The extraction of minerals promotes a set of unwanted effects that can be called externalities. Many are the environmental impacts of mining, and present themselves in several scales: from specific locations to biological changes, geomorphological, effluents and atmospheric of enormous proportions. In general, make public the social and environmental action of the companies, using sustainability reports, to improve its performance, can be a way to hinder unlawful practices and encourage behaviors and appropriate procedures. The objective of this dissertation is to analyze if, to be legitimate, companies from mining iron ore suffer the influence of institutional pressures on the behavior of isomorphic sustainable actions reported in sustainability reports. To that end, we performed a bibliographic study and an empirical study. The mining sector in Brazil, including the activity of extraction of ores, was chosen for analysis due to its impact on the environment. In this way, this dissertation follows a qualitative method, exploratory, bibliographic and documentary, using a longitudinal analysis of content, using sustainability reports, in the period of 6 years (2010 to 2015), four companies of extractive minerals in Brazil. The results showed that there are strong isomorphic pressures. Were identified 15 types of culture, encompassing the three types of mechanisms: coercive, mimetic and normative, included in the elaboration of the RS. Among other results, it is important to note that the environment is not considered stakeholder by virtually all companies studied. The limitations encountered were working only with information and secondary data, which the company offers.