Representações sociais sobre os sistemas de gestão ambiental: uma análise em agroindústrias do setor lácteo sul-mineiro

This paper objectified to bring to light the milk industry managers’ social representations on the environmentalmanagement. For such, the systematization of a theoretic-methodological framework was adopted, whoseinterpretation shows that the environmental management, in the view of the researched milk industries managers, runsthree complementary representations. In the first one, the environmental management emerges as an organizationalpractice which necessarily aims the execution of state legal environmental norms. In the second one, the sameprocess 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 environmentalpreservation questions. In the third and last representation, the environmental management is perceived as anorganizational practice that extrapolates the market limits, as it opens space for the adoption of a socially responsiblebusiness attitude.