ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION ACTIONS INFLUENCING INDUSTRIAL COMPETITIVENESS AND INNOVATION: THEORETICAL-PRACTICAL FINDINGS

The aim of this study was to understand if environmental conservation actions influence industrial competitiveness and innovation. A systematic review was performed in the Scopus® database searching for studies published between 2009 and 2016, in order to obtain the knowledge base related to the topic. Additionally, a questionnaire grounded on literature was applied to multisector group of 15 medium and large Brazilian companies with ISO-14000 certification. The results showed that in practice companies recognize that industrial environmental conservation actions have influence on competitiveness and innovation when companies adopt a conscious selection of materials for development of new products without environmental risks or impacts, as well as through continued improvements, innovation of company management system, processing innovations to meet environmental requirements allowing increasing their operational efficiency, processing innovations meeting environmental requirements allowing increasing its productivity, revenue generation with recyclables or wastes, and non-generation of exporting barriers, resulting in costs and losses reduction, thereby increasing the company image in market, thus practical results supported the theoretical basis grounded by Porter.