Chapter: Enacting Corporate Humanistic Management through Sustainable Development Innovation
To extend our knowledge on how companies enact humanistic management we examined the nature and purpose of sustainable development innovation which companies reported through published sources. Using a positivist qualitative methodology based on a modified inductive categorical documentary analysis, we gathered data from 33 companies at two points in time (2009 and 2014) to identify and classify how companies integrate care for society and the environment into actions. Findings show that companies almost exclusively reported continuous improvements to exploit existing products, services, and/or processes rather than radical changes through bringing new products, services, and/or processes to the market. We categorized sustainable development innovation along two dimensions: technological versus social and incremental versus radical innovation. This framework may help practitioners and academics to better understand and foster rationales and schemas which promote corporate humanistic management.
Responsabilidade Social
Corporativa e Estratégia
Este capítulo procura introduzir a temática da sustentabilidade corporativa nas discussões estratégicas da empresa. Desde a publicação do relatório Nosso Futuro Comum, e mais fortemente após a Eco-92, as discussões sobre os impactos ambientais provocados pela ação do homem (e das empresas) vêm ganhando corpo dentro das instituições. O agravamento das crises sociais, e as questões relacionadas a ética, tornaram-se, também, ingrediente essencial nas questões relacionadas à governança corporativa. Desta forma, temas como Sustentabilidade, Responsabilidade Social Corporativa, Gestão Ambiental, Marketing Social, entre outros, não podem passar ao largo das discussões estratégicas da empresa, seja por uma pressão da sociedade civil, seja por uma pressão governamental manifestada pela cobrança de multas e impostos ambientais, ou até mesmo por uma questão mercadológica.
Transformative Learning for Sustainability in a Business School Through the Analysis of Students’ Critical Reflection
The chapter presents the results of a pedagogical experience conducted in a business school located in Brazil between 2015 and 2017. The curriculum applied in five courses in the business administration program – strategic sustainability management, social entrepreneurship, financial market, valuation of variable income assets, and financial management – aimed at transforming students’ rationality toward sustainability through critical reflection. We conducted an exploratory design-based quantitative qualitative research.
Sustainable Innovation in the Brazilian Textile Industry:
The Future is Now
This article deals with the identification of factors which influence the development of sustainable innovations and how these factors can be identified in the Brazilian textile industry. For this, a case study of three companies in the textile sector which included conducting semi-structured interviews with three executives of companies operating in the market studied was carried out. The initial goal of the interviews was, first, to identify whether companies conduct or not, sustainable innovation and, if so, to analyze the factors that lead to this kind of innovation. For the treatment of data, content analysis was used, and the result revealed that: factors, such as fines, penalties and media attention put pressure on organizations to achieve sustainable innovation in search of a better image among its stakeholders. However, some of the Brazilian market factors, such as organizational slack and capital resources are not as important, nevertheless, can be limitations for companies being able to achieve a higher level of service and differentiation in their product range in the pursuit of sustainable innovation.