Inovação para a sustentabilidade ambiental e estratégia competitiva em redes hoteleiras globais: elaboração de um modelo conceitual de relação

Abstract

The objective of this thesis is on the relationship between innovations for environmental sustainability and competitive strategies in global hotel chains. The study is justified theoretically because it brings an issue little explored in hospitality researches, and discusses it in an original approach since that concomitantly treats the themes: innovation from the systemic theories, evolutionary and socio-technical, sustainability and strategy. The practical reason lies on the fact that it deals with relevant topics within the hotel sector and could serve as a guiding for hotel companies who are interested in better understanding this phenomenon. This qualitative multiple case studies, descriptive and sectional temporal perspective, used the thematic content analysis, using the NVivo® software to analyze some of the data gathered, and steadied on the data triangulation to increase reliability of the results. As data source, the empirical part of this research employed interviews and questionnaires, however was also used documentary research. The data showed that there is a direct relationship between innovation for environmental sustainability and competitive strategies in global hotel chains, however this relationship is different in each case and does not occur in a simple and linear way. It was found also that this relationship can be classified according to the biological conceptions of relationship: parasitism, commensalism and mutualism (SAVIOTTI, 2010). It was prepared, then, a conceptual model that presents the variables about innovations for environmental sustainability and competitive strategies, understanding the relationship between these two phenomena.