Radar ambiental: metodologia para avaliar o desenvolvimento da Gestão Ambiental Estratégica

Abstract

Corporate environmental issues are influenced by the rapidly changing business environment, so in that scenario, companies react to those pressures differently. Among the classification system that has been proposed by literature, a strategic environmental management system is the most advantageous for the organization considering that it assists in responding to environmental challenges and can provide sustainable strategic advantages. The Environmental Department positioning is crucial on influencing the strategic environmental management within the company. Therefore, this study sought to evaluate if Environmental Departments of companies are developing environmental management in a strategic approach. For this purpose, a data collection instrument was developed, called Environmental Radar, which seeks to analyze if the Dynamic Capabilities are being developed throughout the investigation of knowledge management practices that support this process. The model was based on existing evaluation methodologies, adapted to the environmental management reality and it is organized according to the four growth challenges: (i) Recognizing Opportunities, (ii) Capturing Opportunities, (iii) Implementing Opportunities and (iv) Managing Growth. The Environmental Radar was applied in four companies and, therefore, it was possible to identify which practices are executed systematically, which occur in an isolated way and also those that are not performed by the participants. In addition, some practices not suggested initially by the Environmental Radar, but that complemented its objectives, has been detected, “Recognizing Opportunities” has revealed to be the challenge that concentrated the most practices performed systematically by the companies studied and “Implementing Opportunities” was the one with lesser adherence. The practices chosen, that make up the Environmental Radar, also allowed to investigate the strategic environmental management approach, as a source of competitive advantage for the company, because it analyzes "what to do", being the "how to do" detailed by the organization. That is, it became possible to conduct investigations in a standardized manner, but respecting and identifying the individualities and particularities of each case. In this way, the tool has proved to be effective not only on evaluating the practices performed by the company, but also serving as a basis for its recognition of the importance of the behavior of the Environment Department that leads to strategic environmental management.