Avaliação da estratégia e das práticas de gestão ambiental de instituições comunitárias de ensino superior

Abstract

The definition and implementation of an environmental strategy, that not just is consonant to the organization’s strategy planning, but also comply with necessities and aspirations of its stakeholders, had emerged as a possible method to be used by organizations to obtain a superior performance when compared to its competitors. Although socioenvironmental issues are more commonly connected to processing and goods production sector, these have arisen in other areas, such as services. Specifically in that, it highlight the field of education and higher education. The globalization process, the search for resources – financial and human – to fulfil its obligations and the increase of accredited institutions by Education Ministry (MEC, in Portuguese) in last decade are just some factors that influences both, the inclusion of environmental issues on the agenda of University Managers and the needs to obtain a superior performance, to ensure its survive in an even more competitive market. In this scope, the present study aims to evaluate and compare the environmental strategy and practices of three (3) Community Institutions of Higher Education (ICES, in Portuguese) from South of Brazil, correlating them to their strategic planning. For that, the development of a data collection instrument (ICD, in Portuguese) has been proposed. The ICD were composed by multiple choice and scale questions and was ad hoc reviewed by specialists as well as was pre-tested. It has been sent by email to all the ICES’ employees (teachers and support staff). The collected data were evaluated through statistical techniques. The results show that all ICES have, at least, some environmental management action ongoing, and their environmental management systems have different formality degrees. The formality of the institutions' environmental management systems is proportional to proactivity of their environmental strategies. Universities that show more organized and structured strategic planning processes are more inclined to apply proactive environmental orientations. The data also reveal that all ICES have issues on articulation of environmental information through their organizational structure, which is more noticeable in the operational level, special between the support staff employees.