Green Chemistry, Green Engineering and Eco-Innovation Towards a More Sustainable Petrochemical Industry: Determinants of Brazilian Petrochemical Companies´ Engagement in GCE-Based Eco-Innovation Processes

Abstract

It is the general wisdom, within the petrochemical industrial sector, that technological changes, for the development of cleaner products, processes and services, is a basic requirement for companies to achieve advanced states of environmental and economic sustainability in the 21st century. It is also agreed that to innovate is essential for this industry make the necessary advancements and to reconcile the firms´ interests of being profitable, in the short-term, with their long-term capacity to evolve with societal pressures to ensure worker‘s and consumer‘s health within a sustainable biosphere. Despite these corporate perspectives, companies´ decisions to engage in the process of change, through technological and management innovations, is contingent on a series of elements that determine companies‘ eco-innovative behavior. This thesis was designed to gain insight into the aspects and determinants that influence ecoinnovative behavior of companies in the Brazilian petrochemical sector. Drawing on Icel Ajzen´s Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), on Montalvo Corral´s TPB-based structural descriptive innovation-directed behavioral model and on Franco Malerba´s Sectoral Systems of Innovation (SSI) framework as its major theoretical frameworks, this study was designed to obtain answers to these research questions: - What is the extent to which Brazilian petrochemical companies are willing to innovate based upon the Twelve Principles of the Green Chemistry and the Twelve Principles of Green Engineering (GCE) as approaches to more sustainable behavior? - How can their willingness to change be documented and explained and what are its main determinants? -What are the sector´s main agents, mechanisms and actions, which are integral to its implementation of GCE and to going beyond them in the future?