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Green teams: understanding their roles in the environmental

management of companies located in Brazil
Charbel Jos Chiappetta Jabbour a, *, Fernando Csar Almada Santos b,
Sergio Azevedo Fonseca c, Marcelo Seido Nagano b
a
UNESP e Univ Estadual Paulista, The Sao Paulo State University, Av. Engenheiro Edmundo Carrijo Coube, 14-01, CEP17033360 Bauru,
Sao Paulo State, Brazil
b
University of Sao Paulo, Production Engineering and Management Department, Sao Carlos, Sao Paulo State, Brazil
c
UNESP e Univ Estadual Paulista, The Sao Paulo State University, Araraquara, Sao Paulo State, Brazil

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Green teams are frequently considered in the state-of-the-art literature as an essential factor for
Received 15 October 2010 companies aiming to implement and improve environmental management approaches and practices.
Received in revised form However, most of the available literature on green teams is conceptual and theoretical by nature.
24 July 2012
Therefore, the main purpose of this article is to evaluate the main characteristics of green teams in
Accepted 14 September 2012
Brazilian companies and to analyse the relationships between green teams and the maturity level of
Available online 4 October 2012
environmental management in those companies. Based on a conceptual background on corporate
environmental management and green teams, a research was done in two complementary phases:
Keywords:
Environmental management
a survey of 94 companies with ISO 14001 certication; and a multiple case study of four industrial
Green teams companies. Survey results suggest that 82% of the studied companies have cross-functional green teams,
ISO 14001 i.e. involving various companies departments; and 65% have functional green teams, i.e. individual
Brazil department teams. The results of the case study suggest that the use of green teams is an instrument to
the greening of companies with ISO 14001 in Brazil. The company with the most proactive and advanced
environmental management is the same company which uses green teams more intensely. Green teams
are especially necessary for implementing more technical environmental management practices, e.g. Life
Cycle Assessment. Since this is one of the rst studies analysing green teams, the results presented can be
useful for companies and public policies aiming to implementation of environmental initiatives.
2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Nearly all current environmental problems originated with
production and consumption patterns created during the Industrial
Revolution and fostered by capitalism since the 20th century (Stead
and Stead, 1996; Wittneben and Kiyar, 2009; Tonn, 2007; Kolk and
Pinkse, 2004, 2005). Adopting proactive environmental manage-
ment approaches is an alternative way to attenuate these impacts
(Hunt and Auster, 1990; Berry and Rondinelli, 1998; Haden et al.,
2009; Boiral, 2006; Buysse and Verbeke, 2003).
The success of an environmental management approach can be
achieved by adopting several techniques (Smith, 2001) aimed at a)
reducing the environmental impact of the products that a company
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 55 14 3103 6000.
E-mail addresses: prof.charbel@gmail.com, cjabbour@terra.com.br
(C.J.C. Jabbour), almada@sc.usp.br (F.C.A. Santos), saf@fclar.unesp.br (S.A. Fonseca),
drnagano@usp.br (M.S. Nagano).
develops (Nielsen and Wenzel, 2002; Pujari et al., 2003; Tischener
and Nickel, 2003; Fuller and Ottman, 2004), b) adopting clean
technology (Kuehr, 2007), and c) adopting environmental
management systems (Kitazawa and Sarkis, 2000; Ghisellini and
Thurston, 2005) that support the inclusion of environmental
awareness in different areas of the organisational structure such as
operations (Sarkis and Rasheed, 1995), nances (Molina-Azorn
et al., 2009), and marketing (Rex and Baumann, 2007).
Although these actions contribute to improving companies
environmental performance, technical changes related to envi-
ronmental management require human and organisational
commitment (Stone, 2000; Govindarajulu and Daily, 2004; Denton,
1999; Bunge and Cohen-Rosenthal, 1996; Bro et al., 2007). These
factors, recently called green human resource management
(Jackson et al., 2011), include organisational culture management
(Harris and Crane, 2002; Howard-Grenville, 2006; Fernndez et al.,
2003), the management of environmental awareness among
workers (Boiral, 2002); environmental training (Hale, 1995;
Unnikrishnan and Hegde, 2007; Venselaar, 1995; Perron et al.,

0959-6526/$ e see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2012.09.018
 C.J.C. Jabbour et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 46 (2013) 58e66
2006), and performance evaluation mechanisms to reward workers
for improved environmental performance (Ramus, 2001, 2002).
Team formation is another important factor for providing support
to environmental action in organisations (Daily et al., 2007; Beard
and Rees, 2000; May and Flannery, 1995; Strachan, 1996;
Govindarajulu and Daily, 2004; Daily and Huang, 2001). Never-
theless, few studies have focused, either theoretically or empiri-
cally, on green teams (Strachan, 1996).
This gap motivated the present study, which was driven by the
following question: Are organisations that engage in more
advanced environmental management more active in forming
green teams than those that engage in less advanced environ-
mental management? To answer this question, the authors of this
article present (a) a literature review on the evolution of environ-
mental management and green teams, (b) the results of a survey of
companies with ISO 14001 certication that evaluated whether the
work of their green teams is related to the characteristics of
more advanced environmental management, and (c) a multiple
case study of companies with ISO 14001 certication to better
understand the mechanisms involved in the formation of green
teams and their relationship with environmental management
performance.
The companies studied are located in Brazil, an emerging
economy in which studies of environmental management and
green teams remain scarce. The debate about the environment and
industry worldwide, methods of production is very relevant to
Brazilian society. For instance, approximately 85% of the cars sold in
Brazil today are powered by ex-fuel; most of them run on ethanol
only, as ethanol is not only less polluting, but in Brazil, it also costs
half as much as gasoline. Another example of the relevance of
environmental and industrial production issues to Brazilian society
relates to the pre-Salt zone, a great petroleum reserve recently
discovered near the Brazilian seashore, the use of which has
provoked intense debate about protecting the environment and
reducing poverty.
To achieve the proposed objectives, this study presents
conceptual essentials (Section 2) regarding environmental
management and green teams. This presentation is followed by
discussions of the studys methodology (Section 3), research results
(Section 3), and conclusions (Section 4).
2. Conceptual background
2.1. Environmental management and its evolutionary stages
The concept of corporate environmental management (Berry
and Rondinelli, 1998; Wittneben and Kiyar, 2009; Hunt and
Auster, 1990; Rosen, 2001), which guided this study, corresponds
to a set of green adaptations or actions that can change the struc-
ture, responsibilities, guidelines, administrative practices, and
operational aspects of organisations. Several tools were used,
including environmental management systems, a set of elements
that work in a synchronised manner to achieve a common goal
(Marshall and Brown, 2003). The term EMS refers to the sum of all
actions that are arranged to perform systematically to monitor their
environmental impact and to manage environmental issues
(Elefsiniotis and Wareham, 2005). Gupta and Piero (2003) sug-
gested that these systems incorporate environmental issues into
strategic organisational activities designed to continuously
improve the relationship between companies and their natural
environment by identifying, measuring, and controlling the
companies environmental impact (Bansal and Hunter, 2003).
Adopting an EMS can provide companies with tangible and
intangible benets such as (a) reducing operational costs related to
natural inputs increase in productivity (Kitazawa and Sarkis, 2000),
59
(b) reducing nes related to environmental issues (Hunt and
Auster, 1990), (c) guaranteeing access to external markets access
(Rosen, 2001), (d) improving organisational image (Miles and
Covin, 2000; Menguc and Ozanne, 2005), (e) attracting and main-
taining environmentally responsible consumers (Ginsberg and
Bloom, 2004), (f) raising the value of stock prices on the Dow
Jones Sustainability Index (Rosen, 2001), (g) obtaining opportuni-
ties to generate innovations (Smith, 2001), and (h) motivating
employees (Hoffman, 2005).
However, adopting an EMS does not occur smoothly. Rather,
there are three evolutionary stages of adopting an EMS: (a) the
environmental management reactive stage; (b) the environmental
management preventive stage; and (c) the environmental
management proactive stage.
Companies in the reactive stage (Hunt and Auster, 1990) adapt
and seek management improvements in face of rigorous environ-
mental legislation. In that stage, companies focus their environ-
mental management activities towards monitoring environmental
legislation, adopting measures to comply with legislative require-
ments (Jabbour and Santos, 2006), and avoiding environmental
issues that affect the organisational routine (Hunt and Auster,
1990). Sometimes called a necessary evil (Azzone et al., 1997),
environmental management in the reactive stage has been
considered the responsibility of a restricted number of workers,
primarily engineers and lawyers, and environmental management
is isolated from other organisational functions. Incorporating
environmental considerations creates a slight mobilisation in the
organisational context resulting from (Topf, 2001) as follows: (a)
lack of integration between company business and environmental
variables; and (b) environmental administrators failure to recog-
nise the relevance of environmental considerations to the guar-
antee of successful performance.
Companies in the preventive stage focus their attention on
preventing pollution (Jabbour and Santos, 2006). Not only do such
companies control pollution already generated, but they also seek
to avoid creating pollution by adopting cleaner technologies
(Kuehr, 2007). These technologies aim to reduce pollution and the
waste of resources such as water (Cagno et al., 2005), which can
improve companies environmental performance by increasing the
rationality of their processes (Rothenberg et al., 2005) and reducing
expenses related to the consumption of inputs. Companies in the
preventive stage acknowledge that such actions can result in
environmental and economic gains (Borri and Boccaletti, 1995).
Companies in the proactive stage assume an internalisation of
knowledge about the ways in which environmental management
can contribute effectively to organisational competitiveness (Berry
and Rondinelli, 1998; Boiral, 2006). Such companies seek to explore
competitive advantages derived from environmental management
by investigating external environmental opportunities (Jabbour
and Santos, 2006), which demands functional integration
(OHeocha, 2000) and the development of an integrated view
between the environment and company performance (Polonsky
and Rosenberger, 2001). Creating competitive advantages based
on environmental management requires an innovative approach
that will differentiate companies in the proactive stage from their
competitors (Hart, 1995). Gonzlez-Benito and Gonzlez-Benito
(2006) reviewed the factors that determine whether organisa-
tions will use proactive environmental management. According to
these researchers, the above factors can be divided as follows: (a)
company features, chiey the companys size, its internationalisa-
tion, and its position in the value chain; (b) stakeholder pressure;
and (c) external factors such the location and environmental risks
of the companys industrial sector. It is believed that the use of
green teams by a company increases as the importance of envi-
ronmental management to the company increases.
60 C.J.C. Jabbour et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 46 (2013) 58e66
2.2. Green teams
The term team refers to a group of people with multidisci-
plinary knowledge who aim to achieve common goals and objec-
tives that guarantee the groups integration (Katzenbach and Smith,
1993).
According to Rothenberg (2003), most green projects demand
several different types of individual competence. Therefore, it is
appropriate to form cross-functional groups (Denton, 1999) to
address complex and interdisciplinary environmental issues, espe-
cially those related to waste reduction (May and Flannery, 1995).
The use of teamwork to manage various aspects of environ-
mental management has become popular among companies in
which production dynamics, competitive pressure, and advanced
technologies demand more compromise among shop oor workers
on environmental issues (Govindarajulu and Daily, 2004).
Environmental management teams, also known as green teams,
can be dened as groups of workers formed, either voluntarily or
involuntarily, to solve environmental problems or to implement
programs to improve environmental performance (Laabs, 1992). In
this study, we considered that green teams could either be func-
tional (i.e. comprised of employees from a single organisational
area) or cross-functional (i.e. comprised of employees from more
than one organisational area).
In companies with ISO 14001 certication, process related to
EMS demands cooperative work by people at several hierarchical
levels who perform several different functions (OhEocha, 2000;
Govindarajulu and Daily, 2004).
Likewise, Rothenberg (2003) analysed environmental manage-
ment projects performed by a California automobile assembler to
investigate the major determinants and categories of its workers
contributions to the success of the companys projects. The author
concluded that, most environmental management projects were
conducted by teams of (a) environmental managers, (b) engi-
neering workers, (c) suppliers, and (d) operational workers.
In the case studies reported in this paper, green teams were
classied into two categories (Daily et al., 2007): (a) functional
green teams formed by members from the same organisational unit
focused on seeking environmental performance improvement in
that unit; and (b) cross-functional green teams formed by members
from different units focused on deeper decision making concerning
corporate environmental management.
In addition, based on Strachans (1996) study, it was assumed
that there are three types of green teams: (a) top administrators
green teams, which are responsible for formulating an organisa-
tions environmental policy; (b) action-oriented green teams,
which are responsible for analysing opportunities to improve
environmental performance by proposing and monitoring pollu-
tion prevention programs aligned with the organisations envi-
ronmental policy; and (c) teams responsible for improving the
environmental impact of specic productive processes by analysing
those processes and proposing more restrictive environmental
improvements.
The literature review described in this section expresses the
following proposition: the use of green teams by a company
increases as its level of environmental proactivity increases. This
argument is analysed empirically in Section 3.3.
3. Methodology and empirical evidence of Brazilian
companies
The empirical evidence in this study was obtained in two
distinct investigatory steps integrating the quantitative survey and
qualitative multiple case studies (Sieber, 1973). The survey results
indicate a relationship between green teams and the evolutionary
stages of environmental management. These ndings were used as
guidelines for multiple case studies conducted at four Brazilian
companies. Moreover, information collected from the multiple case
studies is relevant to a deep understanding, based on examples, of
the quantitative results of those studies.
The study was conducted at ISO 14001 certied companies.
Analysing environmental management at companies with ISO
14001 certication is recommended because (a) among available
EMS, ISO 14001 certication is the most frequently adopted stan-
dard, and thus, it is fully acknowledged by multiple stakeholders
(Bansal and Hunter, 2003), (b) the structure of ISO 14001 certi-
cation is very similar to ISO 9000, which has already been recog-
nised and used by companies (Lawrence et al., 1998), and (c) ISO
14001 is a voluntary certication that can be adopted by any
company regardless of its location, sector, or size (Ghisellinni and
Thurston, 2005).
Section 3.1 presents the design and results of the survey con-
ducted in Brazilian companies about green teams. Section 3.2
presents four cases that provide relevant details about this
subject. Section 3.3 discusses the survey and the results of the case
studies. Those results are particularly useful to provide contextual
elements and examples that clarify the quantitative results (survey)
and this papers theoretical review arguments.
3.1. Survey
The methodology used in the 94-company survey as well as the
results of that survey are presented in Section 3.1.1.
3.1.1. Survey design
The conceptual model of the survey was designed assuming that
the evolution of environmental management is related to green
teams variables. The data were collected through a self-
administered questionnaire (Synodinos, 2003), which was located
on a website created for administering the questionnaire.
Using a self-administered questionnaire has several implica-
tions, which indicate the need to develop:
 Clear and objective questions (Synodinos, 2003) e Every
investigation concept from the literature originated a set of
questions.
 Response options e There were two ways to respond to
a question: (a) open answers and (b) closed answers
(Synodinos, 2003). Open answers were solicited for most
questions that asked the respondent to characterise him or
herself and their organisation, except for a question about the
organisations size. Closed answers were solicited for the other
questions using a seven-point Likert scale that ranged from
totally agree to totally disagree.
The nal version of the questionnaire had (a) 5 questions about
the respondents characterisation of their organisation and others;
and (b) 11 questions regarding the study concepts: evolution of
corporate environmental management and green teams. The
questions requesting respondents to characterise their organisation
and themselves included the following queries:
 Company name and date founded;
 Economic sector of operations;
 Main products manufactured;
 Number of employees; and
 Respondents position.
Table 1 presents the 11 questions about the evolution of envi-
ronmental management and about green teams, with an emphasis
 C.J.C. Jabbour et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 46 (2013) 58e66 61

Table 1 data collection from a single respondent can be inaccurate, we

Construction of the questionnaire from the literature review for variables of envi- believe that environmental managers have a generalised view of
ronmental management and green teams.
the organisation and the data gathered due to the nature of their
Variables Concept Source work.
V1 e Focus on environmental Reactive Stage A total of 392 companies were contacted three times each. The
legislation of Environmental pattern of responses to the questionnaires was inuenced by the
V2 e Environmental management Management
contacts established, as suggested by Schaefer and Dillman
linked to production
V3 e Adoption of end-of-pipe (1998). Over a period of 40 days, 94 questionnaires were
technologies answered, which equalled 23% of the total questionnaires sent
V4 e Focus on the efcient use Preventive Stage Hunt and out, a satisfactory amount in the context of Brazilian research and
of resources of Environmental Auster (1990) in the context of operations management research (Synodinos,
V5 e Activities to improve Management Jabbour and
eco-efciency Santos (2006)
2003). The response rate represents, on average, 2-fold more
V6 e Beginning of the involvement answers than those obtained in studies on the interaction of
of organisational areas in CEM human resources management and environmental management
V7 e Focus on the exploration Proactive Stage Banerjee (2002) (Bro et al., 2007).
of competitive advantages of Environmental
The questionnaires were identied numerically and ordered
V8 e Environmental management Management
inuences supply chain according to the date of their return to facilitate their management.
management This process was performed digitally by using spreadsheets avail-
V9 e Environmental dimension able in the software Statistical Package for Social Science.
inuences strategy
V10 e Functional green teams Green teams Strachan (1996)
V11 e Cross-functional green teams
3.1.2. Survey results
Table 2 shows that two categories of green teams are most
representative of the majority of the studied companies: cross-
on the constructs formed by these questions and the references functional green teams (V11) and functional green teams (V10).
that support them. In total, 9 of the 11 questions were about the Table 3 shows the Spearmans correlation coefcients for the 11
evolution of environmental management: (a) the V1eV3 variables variables used in this study. The rst 9 variables in the table
forming the reactive stage of environmental management; (b) the correspond to the three evolutionary stages of environmental
V4eV6 variables forming the preventive stage of environmental management as follows: reactive stage (V1, V2, and V3); preventive
management; and (c) the V7eV9 variables forming the proactive stage (V4, V5, and V6); and proactive stage (V7, V8, and V9). It is
stage of environmental management. There were two questions important to note that there was no signicant correlation between
about green teams, one about functional green teams and the environmental management practices based on legislation (V1)
other about cross functional green teams. The 11 variables were and on a teams categorisation as functional or cross-functional
as follows: (V10 and V11).
When the focus of environmental management was only on the
 V1 e Environmental management focuses on environmental production area (V2), there was no signicant correlation with
legislation cross-functional green teams (V11). Activities to improve eco-
 V2 e Environmental management restricted to the production efciency (V5) were strongly correlated with environmental team
area categories (V10 and V11). Curiously, the variable related to
 V3 e Environmental management focuses on adoption of end- exploring competitive advantages based on environmental prac-
of-pipe technologies tices presented signicant correlation only with functional green
 V4 e Environmental management focuses on the efcient use teams (V10).
of resources Given that the study on green teams is still exploratory, was
 V5 e The company adopts several practices to improve eco- conducted an exploratory factor analysis (Table 4). Variables V2 and
efciency V7 were excluded from the table because they do not present
 V6 e Beginning of the involvement of organisational areas in satisfactory communality. Two factors were generated based on 9
environmental management variables with minimum loading of 0.55. Factor 1 was denoted
 V7 e Environmental management focuses on the exploration green teams for a superior environmental performance, including
of competitive advantages variables typical of the preventive and proactive environmental
 V8 e Environmental management inuences the entire supply management stages (V5, V9, V8, and V6) as well as the categories of
chain functional and cross-functional green teams (V10 and V11). Factor 2
 V9 e Environmental dimension inuences company strategy was denoted Characteristics of non-intensive environmental
 V10 e There are functional teams supporting environmental management in teamwork, including 2 variables typical of the
management reactive environmental stage (V3 and V1) as well as a simple
 V11 e There are cross-functional green teams supporting
environmental management
Table 2
The initial databank consisted of companies certied by the Descriptive analysis of the presence of green teams in the companies studied.

Brazilian National Institute of Metrology, Industrial Normalisation Green teams Agreement intensity (%)
and Quality. The nal sample consisted of 392 companies. A special categories
Totally Disagree Slightly Neither Slightly Agree Totally
databank was created for this study, and it included the following disagree in part disagree agree nor agree in part agree
information for each company: (a) the name of the company; (b) disagree
the name of the environmental manager; (c) an e-mail address of Functional 1.1 6.4 8.5 19.1 18.1 27.7 19.1
company contact; and (d) a contact telephone number. green teams
The questionnaires were sent directly to the environmental Cross-functional 2.1 2.1 5.3 7.4 21.3 28.2 33
green teams
managers who coordinate the EMS. Although a survey including
62 C.J.C. Jabbour et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 46 (2013) 58e66

Table 3
Spearmans coefcients for the correlation between environmental management and green teams variables.

Variables V1 V2 V3 V4 V5 V6 V7 V8 V9 V10 V11

V1 e Focus on environmental legislation 1
V2 e Environmental management linked 0.158 1
to production
V3 e Adoption of end-of-pipe technologies 0.391** 0.302** 1
V4 e Focus on the efcient use of resources 0.263** 0.171 0.471** 1
V5 e Activities to improve eco-efciency 0.218* 0.317** 0.342** 0.348** 1
V6 e Beginning of the involvement of 0.220* 0.255* 0.603** 0.499** 0.540** 1
organisational areas in CEM
V7 e Focus on the exploration of competitive 0.147 0.082 0.312** 0.265** 0.105 0.206* 1
advantages
V8 e Environmental management inuences 0.106 0.299** 0.403** 0.162 0.592** 0.503** 0.169 1
supply chain management
V9 e Environmental dimension inuences 0.200 0.334** 0.400** 0.238* 0.684** 0.517** 0.281** 0.696* 1
strategy
V10 e Functional green teams 0.201 0.277** 0.492** 0.351* 0.718** 0.480** 0.212* 0.474** 0.580** 1
V11 e Cross-functional green teams 0.310 0.193 0.492** 0.373** 0.658** 0.454** 0.104 0.412** 0.470** 0.681** 1

*Correlation is signicant for the level of p < 0.05; **Correlation is signicant for the level of p < 0.01.

substitution of suppliers/materials in the search for eco-efciency
(V4).
In sum, the survey results indicated that:
 More developed environmental management characteristics
tended to relate to green teams;
 Variables contributing to more reactive environmental
management tended not to relate to green teams.
3.2. Case studies
This section presents the results obtained from multiple case
studies (Cunningham, 1997), performed in companies A, B, C, and D.
3.2.1. Case studies design
The case selection requirements included the nature of the
production process of the studied organisations, which favoured
the selection of manufacturing companies because they tended to
present a more dynamic environmental management (Sarkis,
2001). Based on the views of Gonzlez-Benito and Gonzlez-
Benito (2006) regarding the factors that determine environ-
mental proactivity, organisations from different sectors, organisa-
tions that have higher pollution potential, organisations that
advertise environmentally friendly products, and organisations
with ISO 14001 certication were selected.
Consequently, the sample was composed intentionally,
primarily for convenience (Myers, 2009), to nd companies that
already had participated in other environmental management
studies and that were geographically close to the persons who
conducted this study (due to Brazils large size).
After verifying that the companies met the requirements, the
composition process began. A database was created, which
included the data of 12 organisations. A letter introducing the
research was sent to each organisation requesting its participation
in the case study. Four of the companies contacted agreed to
participate. The rst company that agreed to participate in this
study (in 2005) was denoted Company A. Two other companies
agreed in 2005 to participate, and they were denoted Companies B
and C, respectively. In the beginning of 2006, Company D agreed to
participate.
Upon the companies agreements, the employee chosen to
establish contact between the researcher and the organisation
made initial telephone contact with the organisation and obtained
answers to preliminary questions. Based on this information, it was
observed that each of these organisations (Voss et al., 2002) (a) was
relevant to the adopted conceptual model, (b) could evidence the
investigated phenomena, and (c) was able to be studied throughout
the entire case study.
It was concluded that the group of companies studied met the
requirements (Dul and Hak, 2008) and recommendations for the

Table 4
Exploratory factor analyses for the correlation between environmental management and green teams variables.

Variables Factor 1 Factor 2 Mean Standard Communalities Eigenvalue Accumulated Cronbachs KMO
deviation percentage alpha coefcient
of explained
variance (%)
V5 e Activities to improve 0.873 5.766 1.462 0.780 4.823 43.842 0.8856 0.841
eco-efciency
V9 e Environmental dimension 0.827 5.542 1.535 0.705
inuences strategy
V8 e Environmental management 0.804 5.702 1.420 0.647
inuences supply chain management
V10 e Functional green teams 0.769 5.063 1.529 0.668
V11 e Cross-functional green teams 0.681 5.617 1.437 0.559
V6 e Beginning of the involvement of 0.586 5.031 1.532 0.589
organisational areas in environmental
management
V4 e Focus on the efcient use of resources 0.729 5.212 1.537 0.576 1.284 55.517 0.6369
V3 e Focus on environmental legislation 0.715 4.808 1.588 0.667
V1 e Adoption of end-of-pipe technologies 0.627 5.000 1.784 0.400
 C.J.C. Jabbour et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 46 (2013) 58e66
sample composition. The number of companies was found to be
close to the number adopted by similar studies (Boiral, 2002; Mross
and Rothenberg, 2007; Bro et al., 2008) and, in addition, was
opportune for developing the conceptual background.
Data from Companies A, B, C, and D were collected from mid-
2005 through mid-2007 by interviews, observations, and docu-
ment analysis. The interviews included representatives of human
resource management, environmental management, and produc-
tion. At Company A the manager of human resources, a human
resources assistant, the environmental manager, and an environ-
mental technician were interviewed. At Companies B, C and D, the
managers of human resources and the environmental managers
were interviewed, as well as a third person from production. The
quantity of managers interviewed in internationally validated
studies was followed (Boiral, 2002). All of the organisations studied
were large companies in the state of So Paulo, which contains the
highest industrial concentration in Brazil.
The contents of the interviews were written in a notebook for
later recovery. The core questions in the interview were:
 What are the main environmental management practices
conducted by the company?
 What are human resource managements role and practices in
environmental management?
 What are environmental managements main challenges and
opportunities at the company?
 Comment on the evolution of environmental management at
the company.
 Explain the functioning of the companys EMS.
 Comment on the teams that support environmental
management.
During this process, technical visits, personal observations, and
document collection were conducted. The most important docu-
ments were (a) the companies environmental policy, (b) social-
environmental reports, and (c) the companies websites. Analysis
of the results followed these procedures: (a) rst, interview data
were transcribed by data processing software; (b) second, the
written data were separated according to themes of interest
(environmental management and environmental teams); and (c)
third, data were crossed between cases and compared to results
obtained in the studys quantitative phase.
3.2.2. Case studies results
3.2.2.1. Environmental management stages. Companies B and D can
be classied as being in the reactive stage of environmental
management. Company Bs environmental management was
focused on pollution control adopting mainly end-of-life process
control technologies, which tended to be followed, in the short
term, by increased operational costs resulting in environmental
management with additional costs. Company B has been ISO 14001
certied since 1997. Although the interviewees stated that the
company considered environmental issues, the company was
located in an area of an important natural resources reserve, and
therefore, it was compelled to adopt impact control technologies.
Incorporating environmental aspects into Company Bs product
development process took place due to the efforts of suppliers, not
due to its own organisational effort.
Company D, which has been ISO 14001 certied since 2001,
presented a decline in its environmental management pattern
because most practices, such as environmental workshops and
knowledge transference between company units, had ceased to
exist due to budget problems. One important environmental leader
and member of the top administration had taken a job in another
organisation. The company stagnated in an environment focused
63
on pollution control, which was generally considered an extra cost
in the short-term due to the inputs required by end-of-pipe tech-
nologies. Environmental improvement observed in the product
development process was reactive to increased environmental
regulations, and the alternatives adopted did not provide improved
environmental performance options.
Company A can be classied as being in the preventive stage of
environmental management. Company A was classied in this
stage for the following reasons: lack of a clear proactive environ-
mental management strategy; sporadic internal mobilisations and
adoption of environmental measures; and minimal focus on
seeking rational exploitation of natural inputs, mainly water,
energy, and raw materials. Company As environmental trajectory
included (a) Sustainable Forest Handling certication (FSC d Forest
Stewardship Council) in the 1990s, (b) ISO 14001/1996 certication
in 2002, and (c) ISO 14001/2004 certication in 2005.
Company C, which exhibited a more advanced pattern of
inclusion of environmental management, can be classied as being
in the proactive stage of environmental management. Its environ-
mental trajectory was as follows: (a) implementation of a solvent
treatment plant in 1980; (b) implementation of the program Life
Cycle Assessment (LCA) in 2001; (c) annual recovery of 75% of the
companys residues; and (d) ISO 14001 certication since 2001. The
primary focus of Company Cs environmental management was the
exploration of competitive advantages in products and processes.
For that reason, the company developed an ambitious program to
conduct an LCA of all its products to reduce systematic environ-
mental impacts. Company C developed several products with
reduced environmental impact, which provided an opportunity for
international patent registration. Company C also had conducted
periodic environmental audits of its suppliers aimed at achieving
ISO 14001 certication.
3.2.2.2. Green teams. In Company A, green teams were present in
the top administration, including the organisations director, the
environmental manager, and the marketing and operations
manager, to sustain the environmental policy of the EMS. This
team also managed the companys FSC certication, together
with the companys forest engineers. Company A had action-
oriented green teams, formed by environmental management
area members, which offered environmental training to new
employees; a team of research and development area members
that managed environmental legislation applicable to the
development of company products; and a team formed by
members of environmental, marketing, and research and devel-
opment areas that assessed new potential green markets and
consumers.
The importance of green teams to the improvement of processes
was veried, such as a green team formed by environmental
technicians and another that managed the eco-efciency Project
zero waste. Company As research and development manager
stated, We have not been strongly oriented towards the develop-
ment of environmental products yet, but this is a tendency [...] my
team has to improve its environmental knowledge to overcome this
barrier [...] otherwise, we will not export our products.
Companies B and D had top administrative teams, formed by
directors and environmental managers, which aimed to review
those companies environmental policies. These teams, mainly in
Company D, were focused on the presence of decision-making
directors. One of the Company D respondents, a director, said that
he was responsible for making decisions reviewing and formulating
company environmental policy.
The leaders of the main green teams at Companies B and D
were environmental managers who were responsible for offering
environmental training to new employees. The environmental
64 C.J.C. Jabbour et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 46 (2013) 58e66

Table 5
Relationship between the environmental management stages, categories, and types of green teams in the companies A, B, C, and D Codes: functional green teams (F); cross-
functional green teams (CF).

Case studies Evolutionary stage Green teams categories

of environmental
management
A Preventive
B Reactive
C Proactive
D Reactive
Top administration
 Green team to review the
environmental policy of EMS (CF)
 Green team for the FSC (CF)
management certication
 Green team to review the
environmental policy of EMS (CF)
 Green team to review the
environmental policy of EMS CF)
 Green team for the approval of the
guidelines and results of reduction
the pollution programs (CF)
 Green team to review the
environmental policy of EMS (CF)
Environmental action
 Green team to provide
environmental training (F)
 Green team to manage the
environmental legislation of the sector
 Green team to investigate new
environmentally adequate businesses (CF)
 Green team to provide environmental
training (CF)
 Green team for the management of the
ideas generation program (F)
 Green team for the analysis of ideas
suggested by members of the
ideas generation and pollution
reduction programs (CF)
 Green team to provide environmental
training (CF)
 Green team to implement LCA (CF))
 Green team to evaluate the environmental
performance of suppliers (CF)
 Green team to investigate new
environmentally adequate businesses (CF)
 Green team to provide
environmental training (F)
Improvement of specic processes
 Green team for the reduction of
inputs consumption (CF)
 Green team for the maintenance
of the wastewater treatment plant (F)
 Green team for the reduction of inputs
consumption (CF)
 Green team for the recovery of
materials (F)
 Green teams formed with the incentives
of ideas generation programs (CF)
 Green teams formed for the pollution
reduction program (CF)
 Green team for the reduction of inputs
consumption (CF)
 Green team for the maintenance of the
wastewater treatment plant (F)
 Green team for the recovery of
materials (F)
 Green team for the reduction of inputs
consumption (CF)
 Green team for the recovery of
materials (F)

manager of Company D said, We are constantly rethinking the
environmental training we offer the new employees [...] the
problem is that many of them stay in the company for only a short
time due to our high turnover, which overload the team. To
improve specic projects, the companies counted on teams in
functional areas that aimed to reduce inputs and increase the
recovery of materials. A Company D environmental technician
suggested this reliance, saying that, We have a team in the envi-
ronmental area responsible for storing materials that will be resold
or donated, thereby minimising the environmental impacts in our
company.
Company C made more intensive use of green teams. It had
several green teams in the different categories analysed. The
companys top administration had an environmental team, which
was formed by the unit director and the environment manager and
supported by other employees and managers, to review its EMS
policy. Company Cs director and environmental manager also
formed a team that analysed the evolution of the companys
pollution prevention program, as well as whether the program had
achieved its goals. We have an outstanding pollution prevention
program and we cannot afford its failure [...] we believe we are
different from our competitors because we have an environmental
management of excellence, said Company Cs environmental
manager.
Company C formed additional green teams. Those green teams
included a team formed by environmental and marketing area
employees to investigate new environmentally adequate areas of
business, a team formed by environmental and sales area
employees to evaluate the environmental performance of
suppliers, a team to provide environmental training to new
employees, a team formed by environmental and human resources
area employees to evaluate ideas suggested by members of the
ideas generation program, and a team formed by environmental
and production area employees to implement LCA of company
products.
In addition to the aforementioned teams, the following teams
were also identied: a team for improving processes; a team for
reducing energy and water consumption in the company; a team
for maintaining the company wastewater treatment plant; and
a team for recovering and re-using materials. Teamwork was
fundamental for implementing LCA for all products and it is our
major goal until 2010 [...] we need to concentrate[d] efforts to reach
our goals, stated a technician on Company Cs LCA implementation
team.
3.3. Cross-discussion (survey and case studies)
The survey (Table 2) indicated that Brazilian companies that use
functional or cross-functional green teams tend to achieve ISO
14001 certication as approximately 65% of the respondents stated
that their companies had functional green teams and 82% said that
their companies had cross-functional green teams. Case studies A,
B, C, and D also indicated the presence of green teams, mainly in
Companies C and A. Conrming the results of the survey, cross-
functional green teams were found more frequently in the case
studies than were functional green teams. Thus, the ndings
conrmed the importance of green teams for environmental
management in companies with ISO 14001 certication (Daily
et al., 2007; Daily and Huang, 2001; Govindarajulu and Daily,
2004; Strachan, 1996).
The result of Spearmans correlation coefcients analysis
(Table 3) found the most important correlations between the
search for eco-efciency (V5) and the types of green teams (V10
and V11). This relationship also was evidenced in the cases studied,
as Companies A, B, C, and D had green teams to improve their eco-
efciency processes. These teams were both functional and, mainly
at Company C, cross-functional. Categories of green teams based on
Strachan (1996) were present in the four companies studied.
Last, Table 4 shows the results of the exploratory factorial
analysis, which in general indicated that the more advanced envi-
ronmental management variables (preventive and proactive
stages) are related to green teams, whereas, the most basic char-
acteristics of environmental management were less teamwork-
intensive.
 C.J.C. Jabbour et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 46 (2013) 58e66
Hence, it can be stated that companies with more advanced
environmental management have more intensive green team
activity than companies with reactive environmental management.
These survey assumptions were conrmed by the results of the case
studies.
It can be seen in Table 5 that Company C, which was at the most
advanced environmental management stage (proactive), used
green teams more intensively than Company A (preventive stage)
or Companies B and D (reactive stage). This suggests that the
intensity of the use of green teams follows the evolution of a com-
panys environmental management.
Moreover, it can be stated that according to the statements of
the interviewees, especially those from Company C, the importance
of green teams was considered fundamental to manage and
improve the relationship between the company and the environ-
ment, as suggested by those who have conducted state-of-the-art
research on this theme (Daily et al., 2007; Beard and Rees, 2000;
May and Flannery, 1995; Wehrmeyer, 1996; Strachan, 1996).
Consequently, it can be stated that the proposition presented in
Section 2 is valid because organisations with a more proactive
environmental management orientation tend to use green teams
more intensively.
4. Final considerations
This study investigated the relationship between green teams
and the evolutionary stages of environmental management in
Brazilian companies. Therefore, a survey and case studies were
conducted using Brazilian companies with ISO 14001 certication.
The results indicated that organisations with more advanced
environmental management systems used green teams more
intensively than organisations with less advanced environmental
management systems.
An investigation of the relationship between the stages of
environmental management and green teams has not yet been
conducted by a major study in the area (for example, May and
Flannery, 1995; Daily and Huang, 2001; Strachan, 1996).
Additionally, it was veried that the organisations under study
used functional and cross-functional environmental teams (Daily
et al., 2007), classied in different categories according to
Strachans (1996) proposal. Organisational managers who seek to
evolve company environmental management practices continu-
ously should concentrate their efforts towards providing incentives
to form different types and categories of green teams, as done by
Company C.
The main limitations of this study are (a) the results were
restricted to some Brazilian companies, and (b) only companies
with ISO 14001 certication were analysed. Furthermore, it must be
underscored that classifying companies by evolutionary stages is
always a difcult task. To overcome these limitations, the results of
this study can be complemented with the following types of future
research:
 Compare the relationship between the evolution of environ-
mental management and the formation of green teams at
companies in other countries;
 Analyse the formation of green teams at companies that do not
adopt ISO 14001 certication, but instead adopt other envi-
ronmental management methodologies such as cleaner
production.
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