CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN BRAZIL AND CHINA: AN ANALYSIS OF SUSTAINABILITY POLICIES IN TEXTILE FIRMS

Informações

Código: ESO1173
Divisão: ESO - Estratégia em Organizações
Tema de Interesse: Tema 05 - Estratégia, Sustentabilidade Socioambiental e Ética Corporativa

Autores

Monica Cavalcanti Sá de Abreu, Francisco de Assis Soares, Felipe de Castro, Sandra Maria dos Santos, Ana Rita Pinheiro de Freitas

Resumo

As two of the BRIC nations, Brazil and China are growing fast economically. Changes inGovernment policy over recent years have aimed at supporting accelerated growth. Bothcountries have assumed more importance in international affairs and leadership roles in theirrespective regions. Nevertheless, it is not clear how the rise of the BRIC nations will be manifestin terms of corporate social responsibility (CSR) approaches. Corporate social responsibility(CSR) can be defined as the duty of a corporation to create wealth in ways that avoid harm to,protect, or enhance societal assets and the environment. The fundamental idea is that corporationshave duties that go beyond lawful execution of their economic function. The overall performanceof a firm must benefit society. This paper identifies differences and similarities in corporatesocial responsibility policies of several textile companies located in China and Brazil. A surveyof 45 managers covered five main CSR polices involving practices related to marketplace,workplace, environment, community relationships and company values. Regression models wereused to determine the influence of three variables (country, size and nature of production process)on the adoption of CSR polices by firms. The results revealed that the country exerts a significantinfluence and that Brazilian firms have more CSR practice in place than Chinese firms. Themacro institutional environment in a country strongly affects firm CSR policy. Brazil has a morerule-based governance environment and democratic maturity regarding economic, political andracial issues which exert a significant influence on CSR adoption. Legislation imposes economicpolicies and control over the activities of firms and it is crucial for them to implement soundsocial and environmental practices. The results also show that firm size and production processdo not significantly affect adoption of CSR polices. Our study also reveals that CSR is not widelyused in textile industries in either China or Brazil. There are some differences between thepractices emphasized in the two countries but no difference in company values, probably becausetextile industry is exposed to a highly competitive global market where success is mainlyachieved by low prices. Even in a globalized competitive environment, firms having the samesize e technological process can have different approaches in terms of CSR depending on thecountry. Our findings suggest that Governments in emerging countries should strengthen theenforcement of regulations but also provide adequate infrastructure, training and incentives thatsupport common environmental and social goals of government, business and society.

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