Social representations on the environmental management systems: an analysis in the Minas Gerais state – Brazil milk sector

Abstract

This paper objectified to bring to light the milk industry managers’ social representations on the environmental management. For such, the systematization of a theoretic-methodological framework was adopted, whose interpretation shows that the environmental management, in the view of the researched milk industries managers, runs three complementary representations. In the first one, the environmental management emerges as an organizational practice which necessarily aims the execution of state legal environmental norms. In the second one, the same process refers to the managers’ imagination as an organizational strategy which may contribute for gains incompetitive advantages in the market, which is becoming more and more demanding when it comes to environmental preservation questions. In the third and last representation, the environmental management is perceived as an organizational practice that extrapolates the market limits, as it opens space for the adoption of a socially responsible business attitude.