Responsabilidade social como estratégia em empresas industriais do setor moveleiro em busca da sustentabilidade

Abstract

The vigorous transformations in the worldwide reality indicate the need of a responsible entrepreneurial awareness in the development process and require attitudes and practices from the businessmen that are socially responsible and sustainable. The current research aimed to analyze the practices and the relation between social responsibility management, sustainability and the strategies of furniture industries. The characteristic of this paper is a qualitative research from a study case and a descriptive one with semi-structured interviews. The empiric concretization of this qualitative research happened in two furniture factories located in the cities of Santa Maria and Sarandi, in Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil. The results highlighted the importance of social responsibility and sustainability once these themes are part of these company values. As internal challenges, they pointed out internal barriers for the implementation of sustainability; showed that the companies made their employees more sensitive about their social responsibility and also about sustainability, what demonstrates that the management is concerned about these themes; highlighted practices which are integrated to the productive processes on sustainability and also showed that sustainability and social responsibility are not part of the essential aspects of the business but are complementary ones. As external challenges, in a broader way, it was possible to verify that the companies involve their suppliers, customers and their communities in some kinds of actions aiming to understand the questions about social responsibility and sustainability. The data which were collected and analyzed allowed us to realize that these enterprises give importance to the sustainability and to social responsibility and that their practices contribute positively for the economic and social performance of the organizations.