Resumo

Título do Artigo

ORGANIZATIONAL AND INSTITUTIONAL FACTORS THAT INTENSIFY THE USE OF GREENWASHING BY THE WORLD’S MAJOR CAR MANUFACTURERS
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Palavras Chave

Organizational and institutional factors
Greenwashing
Major car manufacturers

Área

Gestão Socioambiental

Tema

Responsabilidade Social Corporativa (RSC)

Autores

Nome
1 - Pedro Holanda Batista
Universidade de Fortaleza - UNIFOR - Programa de Pós-Graduação em Administração - PPGA
2 - Oderlene Vieira de Oliveira
UNIVERSIDADE DE FORTALEZA (UNIFOR) - Edson Queiros
3 - Felipe Alexandre de Lima
University of Kassel - Germany

Reumo

Many companies have observed consumer trends toward sustainable products and practices, as well as the increasing international awareness of most governments about environmental conditions. Although some companies do not have sustainable products or perform sustainable activities, they seek ways to convince the general public that they are concerned with sustainability. Albeit the increasingly regulation over the automotive industry, some vehicle manufacturers have not complied with the necessary legal requirements, practicing greenwashing to appear far more environmentally friendly.
: Many scholars (e.g., BARRETT et al., 2015; JONSON et al., 2017; JUNG; PARK, 2016; WANG et al., 2016) have focused on the fraud committed by Volkswagen and the Dieselgate case as interrelated events. Nevertheless, little research to date has investigated the factors that intensify the use of greenwashing by the world’s major automakers. In an attempt to fill this gap, this study identifies the organizational and institutional factors that have intensified the use of greenwashing by key automakers at the international level.
According to Peattie (2001), the early 1980s witnessed an increase in the number of laws that tackled the environmental damage caused by companies. The advent of the Ecological Green Marketing (1° phase) took place. Besides highlighting the need to preserve nature, the 2° phase of Green Marketing, in the late 1980s, also addressed the need to care for human beings (PEATTIE, 2001). In the 2000s, the third phase emerged, called Sustainable Marketing, bringing up the sales of sustainable products. But if companies make false sustainable promises and deals, they can engage in greenwashing.
This research is descriptive in nature (COLLIS; HUSSEY, 2014) and adopts a qualitative approach (GODOY, 1995). Godoy (1995b) states that documentary research is one of the most common techniques within qualitative researches. Therefore, documentary research is used in this study.The representativeness criterion was chosen to define the companies that would integrate this research (VERGARA, 1998). Content Analysis was employed to analyze the retrieved data, following the fundamental steps of pre-analysis and exploration of materials, and treatment of results (BARDIN, 2002).
In 2014, the ICCT joined the WVU in the US to carry out a study to test different diesel cars in order to measure their level of pollutant emissions. They discovered that Volkswagen cars emissions were 35 times higher than allowed by the US law. These tests exposed the massive Volkswagen Group's emissions fraud involving around 11 million cars, in 2015 (CREMER, 2015). Other major automaker was than dragged to the Dieselgate scandal: Daimler, Mercedes-Benz's owner. In 2018, Germany’s Transport Ministry announced that 774,000 Mercedes-Benz cars in Europe contained defeat devices (BBC, 2018).
The analysis shows that the selected companies have promoted themselves through false and deceptive practices (greenwashing). The first category is associated with external actors, such as the government. All investigated automakers, at different times, used software that caused part of their respective diesel vehicles to emit smaller amounts of nitrogen oxides than allowed by the European and North American legislation. The second category is internal, in which the investigated companies have sought to avoid legal sanctions and economic losses through fraud, causing socio-environmental harm.
ASSADOURIAN, E. Ascensão e queda das culturas de consumo. In: WORLD WATCH INSTITUTE. Estado do Mundo, 2010: estado do consumo e o consumo sustentável. Salvador: Uma Ed., 2010. DELMAS, M. A.; BURBANO, V. C. The Drivers of Greenwashing. California Management Review, 2011. Retrieved from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1966721. Accessed: January 04, 2019. LYON, T. P.; MONTGOMERY, A. W. The Means and End of Greenwash. Organization & Environment, v. 28, n. 2, p. 223-249, 2015. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1177/1086026615575332. Accessed: April 16, 2019.