Ações de responsabilidade socioambiental e o desempenho econômico-financeiro em micro e pequenas empresas do nordeste brasileiro

Abstract

The objective of this research was to analyze the relationship between social and environmental responsibility actions and the economic and financial performance of Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) located in the northeast region of Brazil. To this end, we worked with a sample of 55 MSEs characterized as “socially and environmentally responsible”, according to the sustainable guidelines model of the Global Reporting Initiative - GRI (2013). To achieve the objective, content analysis, descriptive statistics and the non-parametric Mann-Whitney statistical test were used, with data collected from the Econodata portal and from the MSEs' websites and social networks. The results of the study indicated that the MSEs “Agua Mineral Refresq.”, “L7 Logistica” and “Epesol Energia Solar Ltda.” were the ones that demonstrated the most social and environmental responsibility actions. It was found that 33 SMEs were categorized in the group of companies that demonstrated fewer socio-environmental responsibility practices and 22 were classified in the group of companies that presented more socio-environmental responsibility actions. It was also observed that there were no statistically significant differences between the group of SMEs that disclosed more socio-environmental responsibility actions and the group that demonstrated fewer socio-environmental responsibility actions. Thus, the hypothesis that SMEs that demonstrated more socio-environmental responsibility actions achieved greater economic and financial performance than SMEs that demonstrated fewer socio-environmental responsibility actions was rejected.