Strategic sustainability management and export performance

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the practices of strategic sustainability management and the main indicators of export performance in industrial companies of the rubber artifacts sector.

Design/methodology/approach

The study characterizes itself as descriptive and quantitative and has had the intention to analyze the main practices of strategic sustainability management and the export performance indicators in companies of the artifacts and rubbers sector of the States of São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul. For this, one has carried out a survey with companies of the rubber sector. The conceptual model adopted in the study is made up of a set of variables related to the strategic sustainability management and to the export performance.

Findings

The main results have made evident that, in general, companies involve stakeholders and their employees in sustainable strategies; internationalize themselves via exports, by means of intermediaries in Brazil and find themselves in an initial internationalization stage. Moreover, it is possible to maintain that most companies do not believe that sustainability is an initiative separated from company action.

Practical implications

One recommends to the studied companies a greater commitment with the international strategies, organizing themselves to pressure the government to give a greater support to the studied sector, and a greater inclusion of sustainability in the organizational strategies, in order to improve their competitiveness in the local and international market.

Originality/value

The analyzed data allowed identify the great importance of sustainability, with few barriers against their implementations. Furthermore, it is possible to say that the actions which are toward the practice of sustainability management helped positively for the export performance, confirming the hypotheses of this paper.

Citation

Henrique da Rocha Vencato, C., Maffini Gomes, C., Luciane Scherer, F., Marques Kneipp, J. and Schoproni Bichueti, R. (2014), "Strategic sustainability management and export performance", Management of Environmental Quality, Vol. 25 No. 4, pp. 431-445. https://doi.org/10.1108/MEQ-02-2013-0014