Gestão estratégica da inovação sustentável e sua relação com o modelo de negócios e o desempenho empresarial

Abstract

The conditioning factors of the globalized world create new demands and opportunities for the development of a corporate management model based on the assumptions of sustainability, which imply substantial investments in innovation. The objective of this study was to analyze the relationship between strategic management of sustainable innovation, business model and business performance of manufacturing companies. The strategic management of sustainable innovation was analyzed from two dimensions: strategic posture, underpinned on the studies of Schaltegger, Lüdeke-Freund and Hansen (2012) and de Eiriz, Faria and Barbosa (2013); and sustainable innovation practices, evaluated on the basis of Bocken et al. (2014). The analysis of the business model was based on studies of Boons and Lüdeke-Freund (2013), Kiron et al.(2013) and Taran and Boer (2015). Business performance was evaluated by considering the dimensions proposed by Gunday et al. (2011), GRI (2006) and the OECD (2005). The first phase of the research was qualitative; a multiple case study was conducted with four companies from Brazil and four companies from Spain. The results of this phase showed that the management of sustainable innovation is considered to be a strategic issue in the Brazilian companies, and there is a clear relationship between business model and business performance. However, in the Spanish companies, innovation is related to the search for better results, and actions in favor of sustainability occur because of legal restrictions and consumer pressure. An association between the dimensions could not be identified. The results of the qualitative phase have confirmed the guiding assumption that the strategic management of sustainable innovation, the business model and the business performance of companies differ in the business context of an emerging economy such as Brazil and of a developed economy such as Spain. The second phase of the study was quantitative; a survey was conducted with Brazilian manufacturing companies. The results have shown that the strategic management of sustainable innovation is related to the companies' business model and their business performance, as there were positive associations between the dimensions of the independent and dependent variables. There were also differences between the adoption of sustainable management of innovation, degree of innovation of the business model and business performance, as there were significant differences in the test of difference between means and in logistic regression analysis. Thus, the assumptions of this study were confirmed.