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Abstract: The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is associated with the idea that every organization should integrate environmental, economic and social issues as part of their organizational philosophy. In companies with a higher degree of development in terms of CSR, sustainable practices are integrated into management systems. When focusing on Latin America, this integration may be at its first steps, but there is a vacuum in the literature in this field. Based on this reality, this paper aims to evaluate the integration between CSR practices and management systems in companies in Brazil based on experts’ perceptions. Employing a conceptual model covering how stakeholder demands are incorporated in organizational practices using a continuous improvement approach, we performed a survey with experts in the area. Results revealed opportunities for improvements in all CSR practices evaluated, most of which were considered by the experts to have been implemented only superficially. In a comparative analysis, two practices stood out in relation to the others: reporting of CSR results to stakeholders and evaluation of the performance of CSR activities using pre-established indicators. Practices associated with planning of CSR activities are the most superficially implemented, adversely affecting CSR performance. The authors believe that the findings of this study could be useful for business managers and academics as guidance towards improved CSR efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The internal marketing concept refers to visualizing employees as internal consumers and emphasizes the need to listen to and satisfy employees as a requisite to satisfying company customers. This paper focuses, then, on the influence of internal marketing on the adoption of a corporate culture oriented to customers; i.e., a marketing orientation. Based on operationalization of the internal marketing concept from Lings and Greenley (2005), we propose a conceptual model for connections between the internal market orientation and market orientation concepts. The results of an empirical study based on a questionnaire applied to 109 Brazilian firms from several economic sectors corroborate the proposed model. The adoption of internal market oriented behavior, particularly the dimensions relative to the dissemination of information and implementation of responses, influences external market orientation and its dimensions (information production, information disclosure and response). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies in literature discuss the drivers to implementing environmental management systems and some of them appraise the characteristics of companies that are implementing these systems and related practices. The goal of this paper is to characterize groups of Brazilian companies with similarities in terms of their adopted environmental management practices. To achieve this objective, a cluster analysis was applied to identify and characterize groups of companies with similar environmental management practices. The practices considered for clustering were: organization of environmental management, adopted procedures, information policy, consumption of natural resources, waste treatment, and additional environmental actions (those not classified in the previous categories). Overall results showed that companies with the best environmental performance belong to the group of largest companies and most of them are in the industrial sector. Environmental practices with the best performance in this group comprised the consumption of natural resources and waste treatment. The environmental practices with the worst performance in all groups were in the additional environmental actions category, comprising the use of renewable energy sources, the development of projects to obtain carbon credits, and the adoption of Green Seal certification for neutralizing carbon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to evaluate the perception of experts on the contribution of the Brazilian industrial sector in terms of sustainable development, focusing in particular on three of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) presented by United Nations (UN). A survey was conducted with professionals from Brazilian industry in order to identify their perceptions. It obtained sixty one answers and the collected data was evaluated technically and descriptively by TOPSIS analysis. It was found that Brazil has been carrying out some relevant actions, both sporadic and planned, with significant opportunities for improvement. Comparatively, the most cited contributions are those related to increasing productivity and technological modernization, which contributes to the inclusion of young people in the labor market, improving resource efficiency and the minimization of environmental degradation. Conversely, the least cited contributions are those related to the stimulation of sustainable consumption and negotiation with small companies. Therefore, the authors believe that the findings of this research could be useful for professionals and academics as guidance. It is also important to mention that no similar paper was found with an academic basis, which reinforces the originality and the contribution of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyze what extent the location inluences the internationalization process of Brazilian companies. From ive models of internationalization, that key concept is cross compared to explain the empirical analysis of the cases. The research is characterized by its longitudinal approach and methodological procedures based on the adaptive theory. Data analysis was performed in two stages: descriptive and the method of constant comparison, both using ATLAS/ti software. Based on the concept properties, four signiicant events emerged, with distinct dominance over time: trends, and comparative locational advantages (transactional and comparative) and disadvantages. The results show that the comparative advantages were decisive for the start of the internationalization and boosted the trends in the region. Transactional beneits are present in later stages, acquired through the opening of subsidiaries abroad. Locational disadvantages were also perceived throughout the whole process due to unforeseen chance events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to analyze the relationship between the voluntary disclosures of relevant information on the websites of a sample of 282 non-financial Bovespa-listed publicly-quoted companies. Based on the relevance of the corporate information (financial and governance) assessed by the information intermediaries and that provide the basis for constituting weighted disclosure indices the results suggest that there is more disclosure: i) the bigger the firm is and the bigger the return on company shares; ii) in companies that have a special type of corporate governance; iii) for those categories of corporate information that are more requested by the rating agencies and by stock brokers; iv) in companies with larger debts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]