inovação tecnológica e o meio ambiente - um estudo das empresas do setor de calçados de Campina Grande Paraiba.

Abstract

The past three decades were marked by profound changes in the way mankind understands its relation with the environment. The 90‟s are especially important for the expansion of these transformations to various sectors of society, mainly to the productive sector. New requirements are constantly being created, forcing individuals, companies and organizations into generating, acquiring and using more intensively knowledge and innovation. With this in mind, the early 90‟s may be considered a mile stone regarding environmental changes in Brazilian organizations.The association of science and technology in order to find levels of environmental depletion started to strongly influence commercial organizations, and environmental issues became to be understood by some companies as a market differential factor. For this new reality, this thesis aims at analyzing how the process of industrial restructuration influences the industrial sector as a whole, and, mainly, the shoe industry of the City of Campina Grande, State of Paraiba, calling attention to potentials and limits found by these companies when managing issues related to their productive processes, and to environmental and organizational impacts of technological innovations currently applied. From the data collected through an on-site research carried out in 2008, the main innovations implemented to the companies were identified. Results show that, as theory states, large companies are more likely to adopt more environmental innovations. Therefore, investigated companies present distinct strategies of environmental practices. Large companies are in a more advanced step, in which the environmental awareness is perceived. The other companies are in an emerging phase in which the adoption of positive actions towards the environment are strongly determined by legislative pressure.