Avaliação da performance social corpotativa na ótica dos STAKEHOLDER: proposição de uma metodologia.

Abstract

This thesis deals with the relations between business, society and the environment, with enphasis on the effects of corporate activity on organizational stakeholders, including the environment. The research problem was established based on the recognition of the insufficiency of corporate social responsibility speeches and practices to restrain the increase of business negative impacts. The self-criticism on the area of study that deals with this phenomenon, Business and Society (B&S), urges for the superation of the area’s usual approaches. The instrumental approach, dominant on studies and practices, seems to offer ‘business without ethics’, while the opposite, normative, would deliver ‘ethics without business’. One possible way out of this paradox, taken on this work, is the incorporation of stakeholders approach on business and society conceptual models, evaluations and practice. Corporate Social Performance (CSP), main focus of this thesis, is an integrative construct, originally proposed to conciliate B&S normative and instrumental perspectives. It’s focused on the examination of business’ effects on society and is compatible with stakeholders’ approach. However, it’s conceptual developments were not enough or properly validated due to several limitations on CSP assessment empirical studies. In this context, this thesis objective is to propose a CSP assessment methodology based on conceptual models and on a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) notion ‘remoralized’ by stakeholders perspective. To do so, elements from CSP, CSR and Stakeholders Theory were combined in a research design structured in the following logic: i) state of the art critical analysis; ii) identification of possible solutions to the problems found; iii) chioces to determine conceptual and operational aspectos of the proposed methodology. The proposition was tested in a case study with employees of a power distributor company in order to refine the methodology, confirm its applicability and ilustrate some analysis possibilities, helping the understanding of the theoric-methodological proposal. This process resulted on an assessment methodology that is consistent with Corporate Social Performance models and that overcomes tipical limitations of empirical studies. Its assessment approach is more ethical than instrumental, but more pragmatic than normative approaches, because it adopts stakeholders perspective as performance standard. Applications of the methodology will generate matricial structured data that allows investigating expectations, perceptions and evaluations os corporate behavior and its effects on stakeholders in various levels of analisys. Thereby, the original proposition presented on this thesis contributes with the validation of Corporate Social Performance construct and joins the efforts on seeking for alternative ways of studying and practicing business, society and environment relationships.