Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The main objective of this essay is to reflect on the interrelations between the concepts of green consumption and sustainable consumption. Having in mind the existence of a widely disseminated environmental discourse in society, as well as the centrality of consumption in this same universe, one can perceive the existence of two opposite models concerning the forms of thinking and acting. While the former is configured as a model of consumption imposed by capitalism itself, and essentially resigns its practices and adopts a discourse that is to some extent convenient, the latter positions itself in a critical way and counts on essentially transformative logic. This reflection, however, does not deal with a comprehensive or definitive view on the subject. It is an exercise that starts from an interdisciplinary reading about the main points shownin the literature. Thus, the texts chosen for the preparation of this work serve not as a systematic review on the subject but, as it were, as inspirers of a reflection that seeks to better understand the issue of consumption in our contemporary society. The points of convergence and divergence in the chosen texts will be duly pointed out in the sense of drawing a path that highlights the understanding of the nature of consumption, especially sustainable consumption.

From the identification of the current and growing demand for higher quality, efficient and effective public services, the evaluation of public policies becomes increasingly indispensable. This article highlights the importance of this stage of the political cycle regarding the exercise of evaluation as a crucial tool for the improvement and development of the management of public policies, especially those of a multidimensional nature. This research is characterized as a theoretical essay with the purpose of constructing a broad and integrated analysis on public policy assessments based on the published literature, in addition to understanding and proposing reflections on the model currently adopted mainly in relation to actions carried out by multilateral agencies.

This research analyzed the relationship between the different motivations of green consumption in the context of a product with selfish and/ or altruistic characteristics, given the different levels of environmental awareness and its impact on consumer behavior. For this, explanatory research, of quantitative character, was carried out using the realization of an experiment with the scenario of social values and individual consciousness for the method. The results showed that the motivation from the perspective of environmental concern, which proposes an altruistic consumption, had a greater influence on the practice of green consumption when compared to the motivation of the social perspective (fad and individual positioning), which in turn proposes selfish consumption. The data also showed that for the technological elite the social value provided by consumption, whether by its normative perspective or social status, does not influence the practice of green consumption. Finally, the research showed that the level of environmental awareness is an important antecedent of the intention to use green products, in which users with a higher level of environmental awareness have a greater intention to consume. However, it was possible to identify a large gap between the prediction of use and the current use of green products for consumers.

The convergence of the Brazilian accounting standards to the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) was boosted by the creation of the Accounting Pronouncements Committee, in 2005, and by Act 11,638/2007. However, political aspects of this process, such as the role of academia in legitimating the IFRS, have been little explored. This article proposes a critical discourse analysis of the book chapter “Convergência da Contabilidade Brasileira às Normas Internacionais de Contabilidade (IFRS): Retrospectiva Histórica e Desafios para o Futuro” [Convergence of Brazilian Accounting to the International Accountacy Standards (IFRS): History and Challenges for the Future] by Salotti, Carvalho, and Murcia (2015), aiming to identify the main discursive strategies employed to construct a hegemonic narrative about the adoption of IFRS in Brazil. In the theoretical framework, we discuss the concepts of ideology and hegemony, as well as the roles of intellectuals and academia in constructing and disseminating ideological narratives. Empirically, through a critical discourse analysis, the formal properties of the text are described, pointing to their experiential, expressive, and relational values. We also propose an interpretation of the process of production and an explanation of the social conditions of production of the text. The silencing of dissonant voices, the omission of agency and the representation of the Brazilian accounting community and practices in a condition of technical and cultural inferiority are identified as the main discursive strategies employed in the text to reproduce and ratify discourses from the professional field. We take advantage of the symbolic capital possessed by the authors due to the position they occupy in the academic field to attribute universality to understandings of standard-setting bodies.

The accelerated growth of the Brazilian prison population in recent years arouses attention to public policies aimed at recovery and rehabilitation of inmates. The objective of this article is to analyze prison practices related to constitution of the subjectivity and the forms of resistance to this constitution by incarcerated women who participate in the rehabilitation program, using the concept of dispositive as a guide for this analysis. Interviews were carried out with 36 inmates in a Women’s Penitentiary enrolled in the labor rehabilitation program. The data were produced through interviews and the study used the discourse analysis developed by Michel Foucault, seeking to analyze the practices and the economic and political functions manifest in the discourses of the incarcerated women and how these functions act in their subjective and identity construction.

This article aims to present different approaches for exhaustive working hours in order to enrich the discussion about legal and administrative dissents in situations analogous to slavery. It is argued that the exhaustive working hours are compounded by the imbrication of intensity and extensiveness of labor, increasing worker productivity requirements to adjust to the demands of capital. In this sense, exhaustion occurs when the rhythm of activities overlaps concomitantly with the lengthening of the workload for other social spheres. Both the acceleration of movements, under which everything becomes a priority and the constant availability through ICT - Information and Communication Technologies can lead to physical and psychological wear and tear, affecting the health of the worker and placing them in conditions of neo-slavery. This article was written through a bibliographical survey guided by the selection of articles and books found in the main Brazilian research bases that had an affinity with Marxian social theory about the concepts of working hours and working time, discussed by authors such as Dal Rosso, Antunes, Harvey, Dejours and others.

The theoretical object of this study is the theoretical construction of the vicarious leisure of Veblen (1989), having Veblenian concepts as previous factors. The empirical object of this study is the Brazilian film The Second Mother by Brazilian writer and director Anna Muylaert (QUE HORAS, 2015), who won the Sundance Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival in 2015. In order to match Thorstein Veblen's interdisciplinary methodological proposal (1857-1929), this film was analyzed in a historicist perspective advocated by Kornis (1992). Using the categories "class division and its functions", "woman and property", "wealth and status", "work", "ceremony of honor", "conspicuous idleness and social distinction", "heredity and noble blood," "vicarious idleness," and "Brazilian sociocultural-cultural context," it is possible to see that the concepts of Veblen present an adherence to the current division of classes that could be more used to understand contemporary Brazilian phenomena. The issue of vicarious leisure and housework is a relevant economic and social issue and is a recent social debate, as seen in the discussion on the regulation of activity by the State. As the central point of Veblenian work, the transformations of the status quo of the form of consumption permeate the concept of conspicuous consumption for the distinction of status and honor of the Brazilian economic and social classes.

The concept of conscious capitalism structured by John Mackey and Raj Sisodia, is based on the principles of higher purpose, stakeholder integration, conscious leadership, and conscious culture and management, understanding that capitalism can be a force for the economy, social welfare, and for the environment. In this context, the objective of the study was to identify and analyze the content posted and the interactions carried out in discussions about conscious capitalism in groups of the social network Linkedin. The research an exploratory and descriptive study, adopting a qualitative approach and netnographic procedures observing groups on Linkedin. The study used a model of simplified flow of a netnographic research project by Kozinets (2010). The main results indicate that: most of the group owners are in the United States, where conscious capitalism was born; the groups were created with the purpose of interacting with themes related to conscious capitalism; the interactions in the groups happen mainly through posts and comments with subjects related to conscious capitalism. However, the number of members of a group does not reflect a higher number of interactions. Finally, most groups understand conscious capitalism according to the definition set by the pioneers, John Mackey and Raj Sisodia, but putting it into practice in organizations has been a challenge.

Previous studies have suggested that concealment of same-sex orientation at work can lead to feelings of inauthenticity, low commitment, and depression. However, there are several people who, after performing a risk-return analysis of the decision to come out as openly gay, decide to conceal. Therefore, it is necessary to understand how the decision to conceal sexual orientation occurs. This study aims to develop a grounded theory about the silence of gays and lesbians in the workplace as a response to threats in the workplace. We conducted semi-structured interviews with gay and lesbian employees and presented a grounded theory in which we maintain that this silence at work is not only explained by rational and calculative motivations but also by less intentional intra and intersubjective processes. The originality of this study lies in its emphasis on the theory of social identity to explain the phenomenon of disclosure of sexual orientation in the workplace. In the constructed model, we identify reasons for silence associated with different levels of the self, characteristics of the gay or lesbian individuals themselves and the people with whom they interact, who tend to influence the decision by silence. In addition, we understand individual tactics adopted in order to increase safety for sharing sexual orientation. Such discoveries contribute to overcoming the problem experienced by gays or lesbians as a result of the concealment of sexual orientation at work.

Using two-stage Malmquist-DEA analysis, this article aims to evaluate how the Brazilian National Development Bank – BNDES impacts the performance of the steel industry. The study conducts a Malmquist Index decomposition and nonlinear robust regression, testing the impact of contextual variables. The research hypothesis of positive impact over steel industry performance cannot be supported by the model’s results, which suggests a negative coefficient on the catching up effect. Few examples of quantitative research on national development can be highlighted, mainly focused on theoretical and qualitative issues. The study contributes to the field by making use of a settled methodology to highlight and measure firms efficiency performance. Nevertheless, due to limitations derived from the sample selected and the applied methodology, further research must be carried out, mainly to deal with social outcomes derived from this kind of public policy.