6.1 Introduction

Convergence between two agendas:

Criteria adopted by researches, such as the work carried out by FBDS – Fundação Brasileira para o Desenvolvimento Sustentável, can help organizations find their way through the sustainability challenge.

This research aimed at analyzing the commitment to sustainability of major companies operating in Brazil in the pulp and paper, food and beverages and electric power (2005), and financial and sugar cane/ethanol (2007) sectors.

The issues assessed in the organizations concern mainly:
• Motivation: concept awareness, vulnerability to external pressures (NGOs, customers, regulators, capital markets), internal value drivers, strengths and weaknesses, and information systems;

• Implementation capacity: leadership, organizational structure and culture, areas of greater or smaller resistance, and level of predominance of financial aspects in decision-making processes;

• Alignment of the organization: vision, impact and effort of the organization’s several areas regarding sustainability and the identification of a potential hard core;

• Use of management tools: inclusion of sustainability in management tools, especially
in strategy and its consequences;

• Identification of peculiarities in the business sector: influence of sectoral and national characteristics in the sustainability design.

In order to identify drivers of success and main constraints on the adoption of policies and practices compatible with a sustainable development model, it is necessary to:
• Evaluate differences in perceptions, attitudes and behavior patterns among managers responsible for sustainability and other corporate policy makers;

• Identify potential industry-specific differences regarding values, restrictions, etc;

• Evaluate pressures faced by companies to meet internal demands (such as management changes) or external demands (such as shareholders’ return expectations);

• Evaluate whether companies use warning systems or other diagnostic tools to measure social and environmental expectations.

Although a considerable corporate engagement with corporate social responsibility- related themes can be noticed in Brazil, companies may not be addressing relevant issues in their strategic process , thus preventing the sustainability challenges from being adequately assessed, prioritized and internally aligned with the companies’ strategic objectives. This way, unfavorable results can occur or opportunities can be missed both for the business and the society.

Are companies aware of the negative impacts? The business impact on the challenges has shown that the strategy planners see them as positive (70.4% of them). A few (3.8%) consider the impacts as negative. This also occurs with more evident direct impacts. The results show that companies regard themselves as not negatively impacting on sustainability. If a critical segment of the business sector does not regard its impacts on sustainability as negative, from which sectors or institutions can we expect effective measures to tackle so many traditional challenges to Brazil’s development?

Responsible competitiveness is still taking its first steps and progress will depend on a major effort to bring the results demanded by mankind...