Partnerships between private sector and NGOs and the formation of an environmental advertising system: a case study

Author(s)

Helena Lemos dos Reis Magalhães Gomes

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Piracicaba.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Queiroz (ESALA/BC)
• Defense date: 2012-01-27

Examining board members

Antonio Ribeiro de Almeida Junior; Agripa Faria Alexandre; Hélio Cesar Oliveira da Silva

• Advisor: Antonio Ribeiro de Almeida Junior

Abstract

The design of this research has its roots in 2007 when the author participated in the Trainee Program on Environment of the Fundação O Boticário de Proteção à Natureza, now called Fundação Grupo Boticario. During the program, twenty trainees representing NGOs from all over Brazil went through a process that included the development of an organizational development project in the institutions they represented. In this scenario, many challenges to maintain these organizations were brought to the fore, with emphasis on the controversial relationship with sponsoring companies and the impact of their requirements in the internal dynamics of organizations. This research was structured in order to investigate and describe how the business sector has been associating with environmental NGOs to build a positive environmental image as well as how this relationship interferes with the performance of the NGOs. The research also objected to contribute to the production of scientific knowledge on the subject, poorly addressed by the academic sector, and join the research developed within the thematic project \"Social and Environmental Changes in the State of São Paulo and Prospects for Conservation\", financed by FAPESP. The work suggests the formation of a new advertising corporate system that includes new environmental actors, like environmental NGOs. The context that favored this process involves changes in the environmentalism in recent decades, the appropriation of environmental issues as a competitive advantage by the corporations and changes in the organization of society, which includes the boom of the Third Sector. This study can be characterized as an exploratory study, with a qualitative approach, developed as a case study of two NGOs: Fundação SOS Mata Atlântica, based in Sao Paulo-SP, and a small NGO from Piracicaba-SP, which we named ONG 2. We used as data collection procedures: interviews, free observation and survey of documents and advertising materials. From our research, we developed a flowchart that expresses a tendency of the trajectory of environmental NGOs which partner with corporate sponsors, generally interested in promoting their environmental image. By partnering with NGOs with this objectives, in most cases the business sector build partnerships whose primary requirement is the promotion of their image, not the solution to the environmental crisis. The studied environmental NGOs have very peculiar characteristics. But, in general, we concluded that both have not acted in a way to replace the economic rationality, the main cause of environmental crisis, by the environmental rationality, which involves paradigmatic shifts. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 09/06800-3 - Partnerships between private sector and NGOs and the formation of an environmental advertising system: a case study
• Grantee: Helena Lemos dos Reis Magalhães Gomes
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master