Avaliação das influências dos agentes econômicos para adoção de produção mais limpa: survey em empresas de grande porte atuantes no Brasil

Abstract

Companies look for techniques that help them to reduce their costs and improve their operational efficiency, on the other hand, they are pressured by stakeholders to implement environmental practices. Stakeholders are formed by several groups interested in the company's operation, such as suppliers, distributors, shareholders and credit providers. These players were called economic agents and are one of the most important groups of stakeholders because they are related to the main objective of any company: to make a profit. Textile processes consume high amounts of water and use toxic materials. The Cleaner Production (CP) practices allow companies to achieve economic and environmental benefits. This work aims to evaluate the influences of economic agents for the adoption of CP practices in textile companies operating in Brazil. Therefore, it developed a survey which made it possible to see that there is a strong causal relationship between economic agents and the CP practices. The main theoretical contribution of this work was the detailed relation of the influences of the economic agents with several practices of CP. In turn, practical contributions emerge from the theory, such as the fact that economic agents accept environmental interventions in organizational decisions through the adoption of CP practices intrinsically to the environmental management system, thus directing the company towards the compliance with international environmental laws that enable the export of textile products. Additionally, company managers will be able to identify influences from economic agents for the adoption of CP practices that result in improving the company's image and obtaining tangible economic and environmental benefits.