Relationship Between Innovation and Sustainable Performance

Economic activities, and more intensely the business environment, are being pressured to direct their actions towards sustainable performance, more specifically in its social and environmental facets. One of the alternatives to deal with these pressures is innovation. In this paper, we present results of a study conducted on the electrical and electronics industry operating in Brazil in order to examine the relationship between innovation and sustainable performance. The methodology adopted was the strategy of cross-sectional survey, conducted in 112 electrical and electronic manufacturing companies of all sizes and from all regions of Brazil. Data analysis was carried out mainly through Cronbach’s Alpha reliability analysis of scales, descriptive analysis of measures, and especially cluster analysis and analysis of variance (ANOVA). The main results categorise the companies into more sustainable, less sustainable and relatively sustainable, according to their performance profiles. The study shows that the companies in the sample categorised as more sustainable are more prone to innovation and to be collaborative to innovation than the others. These results indicate the importance of the relationship between innovation and sustainable performance, as highlighted by Barbieri (2007), Barbieri et al. (2010), Carvalho and Barbieri (2010), Scandelari (2011) and Scandelari and Cunha (2011). But of greater relevance is the relationship between collaboration and sustainable performance. This fact has not yet been demonstrated empirically, but has been highlighted by Hartman, Hofman and Stafford (1999), Fadeeva (2004), Petzel, Archer and Fei (2010), Bos-Brouwers (2010), Murray, Haynes and Hudson (2010) and especially by Sarkis, Lamb and Brust (2010). The study contributes to the advancement of knowledge of the relationship between innovation and sustainable performance from empirical evidences, providing information on this relationship in Brazilian companies.