Environmental management accounting and innovation in water and energy reduction
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Environmental management accounting and innovation in water and energy reduction Fabricia Silva da Rosa & Rogério João Lunkes & Alcindo Cipriano Mendes
Received: 20 May 2020 / Accepted: 30 August 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract The objective of the study is to analyse the role of environmental management accounting (EMA) and the innovation of products and processes in reducing energy and water consumption. To carry out the study, data from PINTEC2017 on innovation activities from 55 sectors in Brazil from 2015 to 2017 were analysed. The hypotheses were tested with the application of structural equation modelling using SmartPLS. The results show that environmental management accounting (EMA) affects product innovation directly and process innovation indirectly through environmental management techniques. These results show that the use of EMA techniques contributes differently to each stage of innovation (processes and products). Thus, industries with new and improved products for the national market innovate their processes with the use of new technologies, training and innovation activities. These results are most evident in the sectors of paper and cellulose, petroleum products, chemicals and the manufacturing of machinery for extraction and construction. These results show that environmental F. S. da Rosa (*) : R. J. Lunkes : A. C. Mendes Department of Accounting, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Campus Universitário, S/N – Trindade, Florianópolis, Santa Catarina 88040-900, Brazil e-mail: [email protected]
R. J. Lunkes e-mail: [email protected] A. C. Mendes e-mail: [email protected]
management techniques interact with process innovation, mainly in industries that promote product innovation, and that process innovation has led to a reduction in water and energy consumption. Keywords Environmental management accounting . Innovation . Water . Energy
Introduction The consumption of natural resources, such as water and energy, is representative of industrial activities and has a significant impact on the environment. In Brazil, 55% of the captured water (ANA 2017) and 35.7% of the installed energy capacity (162,840 MW) are used in industries (EPE 2019). For companies, environmental problems, such as impacts on water and energy consumption, can represent legal and competitive risks. According to Somji et al. (2020), the increase in environmental legislation and customers’ preferences for the sustainability of goods and services lead companies to follow ecological criteria to ensure competitiveness in the globalized market. This requires companies to have management systems that can identify internal and external performance measures to mitigate threats and seek new opportunities related to environmental sustainability. Thus, modern companies need to rely on environmental policies to operate, which leads to the need for management systems capable of concurrently considering the environment and the economy (Correa-Ruiz 2019; Rosa et al. 2019b; Zandi and Lee 2019).
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