Environmental management, strategic practices and praxis: a study in Santa Catarina industrial companies.
| Autor | Alperstedt, Graziela Dias |
| Cargo | Santa Catarina, Brazil - Report |
Introduction
In recent years, the number of studies that analyze the relationship between companies and the natural environment has grown. This is because global environmental problems, such as climate change, have raised the awareness of society in general concerning the impact of business activities on planet's sustainability (Aragon-Correa, Hurtado-Torres, Sharma, & Garcia-Morales, 2008; Brown, Vergragt, & Cohen, 2013; Yang, Yang, & Peng, 2011). The challenge of sustainability transcends technological advancement. This also includes a change in societal values in addition to the restructuring of public and economic institutions. In this sense, not only the innovations in industrial production are necessary, but also innovations in a company's consumption patterns (Brown et al., 2013).
According to Newton and Harte (1997), many researchers are concerned over the difficulty of making real improvements to the environment, since the social paradigms and normative structures that guide decision making in this field have remained. There is also a group of scholars who have found that the natural environment has been used by managers more for strategic purposes than for ethical or normative reasons (Aragon-Correa, Matias-Reche, & Senise-Barrio, 2004; Banerjee, 2001; Cordano & Frieze, 2000; Sharma, 2000).
Actually, companies' environmental management can be seen as the result of strategic practices regarding the natural environment, often based on managers' perceptions regarding the importance given to the environment and the many external restrictions that are imposed (Coyle, Thomchick, & Ruamssok, 2015; Reis & Queiroz, 2002). Considered a managerial function, environmental management is responsible for the implementation of strategic environmental policies that are implemented by businesses. However, these policies and practices are not always transformed into praxis, leading back to the old problem of the separation of thought and action.
Although organizations have voiced their concern over the construction and maintenance of cleaner and more ecologically sustainable systems (strategic practices), concerns remain over the effectiveness of the environmental management systems put in place by companies (strategic praxis). After all, does praxis related to environmental management systems in companies correspond to their strategic practices?
To ponder this question, this study is based on the perspective of strategy as practice, considering strategy as a social practice (Whittington, 1996). Here, practices are related to "cognitive, behavioral, procedural, discursive, motivational and physical resources that are combined, coordinated and adapted to construct practice" (Seidl & Vaara, 2010, p. 11). Nevertheless, the discourse of strategy in this case does not refer only to the idiosyncratic product of a certain corporate culture, but as part of a considerable social change with effects that reach far beyond the organization. Strategy in this case is viewed as a social phenomenon that alters managers' self-understanding in general.
This study is justified by the gaps in studies on environmental management in business through the perspective of strategy as practice and the lack of studies on the theme in companies in emerging countries. In general, the dominant theory is generated in the context of developed countries, suggesting that studies should be conducted to confirm whether the mainstream is applicable to the context of emerging countries, given the considerable differences between countries (Kang, 2011).
Regarding this issue in particular, numerous studies have documented the weak institutional pressure of many developing countries in terms of environmental regulations and norms. They have reported the difficulties that companies in some countries face to access technology and the skills necessary for environmental proactivity. This has resulted in certain locations coming to be seen as pollution paradises (Christmann & Taylor, 2001). In Brazil's case, the adoption of sustainable practices is still low despite the existence of laws, because there is inadequate supervision to ensure that organizations are respecting the environment (Bonilla, Almeida, Giannetti, & Huisingh, 2010).
On the other hand, as suggested by Peng, Wang and Jiang (2008), institutional forces play a central role in the formation of business strategies in emerging countries due to the strong legacy of government or political involvement in business affairs (Kang, 2011).
Considering that strategic practices do not always correspond to praxis, this study aims to empirically analyze the correlation between strategic practices and praxis in relation to Santa Catarina businesses' environmental management systems. Therefore, the proposed hypothesis is that there is correlation between strategic practices and praxis in relation to the environmental management systems of Santa Catarina industrial companies.
Environment, Companies and Environmental Management
In recent years, society has become increasingly aware of the importance of protecting the environment and the planet's natural ecology (Bonilla et al., 2010; Kanji, 2008; Pedroso, Cella-deOliveira, Dutra, & Morozini, 2012; Suijono, 2011). This has resulted in tougher environmental standards for the business community. A number of mechanisms such as the ISO 14000 environmental management certification have institutionalized international standards and put pressure on industry to improve environmental practices (Yang et al., 2011).
Recognition of these environmental demands has led to changes in the lifecycle and in production costs (to eliminate the residuals and adopt adequate control processes). Alfred and Adam (2009) realized that environmental management is positively associated with companies' operating performance, as it increases the relative productivity of inputs, reduces production costs and maximizes the use of organizational resources. Growing regulatory pressure and client's environmental requirements have also forced industry to reduce or even eliminate the adverse environmental impacts of products and processes. Therefore, environmental management, which includes all efforts to minimize the environmental impacts of a company's processes and products throughout their lifecycle (Klassen & Mclaughlin, 1996), has become an extremely important function in almost every type of industry. "There is also a growing conviction that environmental sustainability challenges require actions that directly impact business strategies and supply chain practices" (Coyle et al., 2015, p. 365). In this sense, sustainable practices can generate new opportunities and, consequently, transform organizations (Perez-Valls, Cespedes-Lorente, & Moreno-Garcia, 2015).
Pollution is the main challenge for environmental management (Yang et al., 2011) and can be considered a form of residual (Porter & Van Der Linde, 1995), as it consumes resources and increases costs with no compensation at all (Handfield, Walton, Sroufe, & Melnyk, 2002). As a result, organizations have made efforts to develop products and services that reduce pollution, require less packaging and less energy consumption (Humphreys, Wong, & Chan, 2003). With this need in mind, the environmental issue has become part of strategic planning in many companies (Donnelly, Beckett-Furnell, Traeger, Okrasinski, & Holman, 2006; Maas, Schulster, & Hartmann, 2014), which seek alternatives to minimize the adverse environmental impacts of their activities during their products lifecycles (Alfred & Adam, 2009; Sroufe, Montabon, Narasimhan, & Wang, 2002).
As the production of green products is manufacturers' responsibility, companies have been concerned with reducing the use of energy and resources, eliminating toxicity from their raw materials and looking at ways of recycling and reusing products at the end of their lifecycles (Gerner, Kobeissi, David, Binder, & Descotes-Genon, 2005).
A number of countries require manufacturers to accept the return of their products after they have been used by consumers. This encourages industry to design products that can easily be recycled or reused. In this way, a green global strategy combines the functions of design, purchase, production, management of suppliers, logistics (including reverse logistics) and information management (Shih, 2003). Therefore, to improve environmental management, companies need to pay attention to the whole production process, including design, raw materials, manufacture, use and recycling.
Performance is measured in terms of positive or negative effects on the natural environment. Manufacturer's operations and products (James, 1994) cause these effects. Nevertheless, despite recognizing the growing importance of environmental management in manufacturing processes throughout the lifecycle of a product, there is a problem concerning how to make decisions about main activities to achieve adequate environmental management in companies.
Selecting the right tool to implement environmental management is very important in terms of costs and compliance with stakeholders' regulatory requirements (Montabon, Sroufe, & Narasimhan, 2007). Humphreys, Wong and Chan (2003) suggested that attention should be paid to five aspects of environmental management: (a) management decisions, (b) green image, (c) environmental design, (d) environmental management system, and (e) environmental competences.
According to Yang, Yang and Peng (2011), the many aspects of environmental management can be implemented through performance criteria and their respective related operations. According to these authors, based on the provisions of international environmental management system ISO 14031, Kolk and Mauser (2002) used three elements to measure environmental management: (a) environmental management indicators, (b) environmental condition indicators; and (c) environmental performance indicators. The latter was...
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