Em busca de um mundo melhor: uma avaliação do discurso sobre responsabilidade social nas maiores empresas da América Latina

Abstract

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has received growing attention, both in academic and corporate area. Companies often define their approach to CSR in different views, being influenced by different factors at the regional, industrial and national levels. This study aimed to identify how the largest companies in Latin America are presented by terms of CSR, and is justified by the fact that, despite the increasing pressure on companies to develop an active role in promoting well-being social, there are few studies that seeks to identify how the Latin American companies approach this type of action. The research was conducted by analysis of organizational documents available on the websites of the top 100 Latin American companies listed in the ranking of "The biggest 500 " prepared by the magazine American Economy . The study is characterized as a cross-section analysis, where countries and sectors were analyzed as individual cases. To the data collection, we used the model proposed by Silberhorn and Warren (2007), which includes motivation principles of CSR, CSR processes and issues related to Stakeholders. For the analysis of results, comparisons were made among the countries surveyed and among the sectors to which firms belong. It was found that, in general, firms of Brazil were more concerned in terms of socially responsible actions than the other firms in other countries of Latin America. Among the economy sectors, Commerce/Trades and Oil/Gas stood out positively about the process and socially responsible actions, while the Automotive/repair-parts fell behind, becoming the sector that has shown less interest in CSR issues.