Abstract

JABBOUR, Charbel José Chiapetta; TEIXEIRA, Adriano Alves; JABBOUR, Ana Beatriz Lopes de Sousa  and  FREITAS, Wesley Ricardo de Souza. "Verdes e competitivas?": a influência da gestão ambiental no desempenho operacional de empresas brasileiras. Ambient. soc. [online]. 2012, vol.15, n.2, pp. 151-172. ISSN 1809-4422.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S1414-753X2012000200009.

Arguments that environmental management can positively relate to the operational performance of companies have been spreading the literature since the 1990s. This approach became known as "green and competitive" or "Win-Win Scenario", where both the environment and companies would benefit from the adoption of green management practices. However, there is a theoretical and empirical gap on this topic, it lacks empirical evidence to validate or refute these arguments to the Brazilian reality. Therefore, this research aims to empirically verify whether the environmental management positively influences the operational performance of companies in the Brazilian automotive industry, focusing on the segment of automotive parts and components. Methodologically, we carried out a survey of 75 firms. The data were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling, a multivariate analysis of second-generation. The main results indicate that the adoption of environmental management practices relates positively with the operational performance. But this operational performance is weakly explained by the research framework. This fact indicates that others organizational variables could be influencing the firm's operational performance. This fact should be analyzed in future researches.

Keywords : Environmental management; Sustainability; Operational performance; Automotive sector; Structural Equation Modeling; Brazil.