Sustainability and green economy, limits and potential of sustainable management

Abstract

This study is about the process of legitimation of sustainable values within enterprise production networks. It specifically addresses the recent changes in corporate management, based on the notion of sustainability, as a result of the growing body of social pressures that increased the risk of contestation of practices and reputations of companies. The objective of the study is aimed at understanding the social phenomenon of institutionalization and appropriation of sustainable criteria within these business organizations. Therefore, we investigated the communication documents released by companies linked to the productive network of green plastic, a product that has the same physical properties of conventional plastic, but is derived from a non-fossil raw material (ethanol). The content analysis points to the expansion of the scope of the documents and their target audience, but also demonstrates the limits and the increasing relevance of the concept of integrated sustainability to the business for the corporaret strategy. The article also proposes a discussion on the ability of this integration to set up a new economic paradigm of sustainability, also known as green economy.

Keywords: sustainability, green plastic, green economy.