The relationship between cleaner production and tertiary sector: a study based in service quality dimensions

Abstract

The service sector has become increasingly active on the world stage, today representing over 60% of Brazil's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and about 80% of GDP in developed countries. Moreover, the concern of the sector with environmental issues has gained significant space, mainly by the expansion of collective consciousness related environment. Therefore, these companies need to restructure their practices and adopt a new position in the face of such issues. Accordingly, an alternative is the continuous application of an integrated preventive environmental strategy to processes that increase efficiency while reducing risks to the environment: Cleaner Production (CP). Based on this background, this research aims to identify how is the relationship between CP and the service sector. For that, will be presented an association based on the literature from the methodology of implementation of CP and the five dimensions of quality used by the services sector as a way to verify impacts on customer perception as to improvements in operations and processes will be presented. The main result indicates that the relationship exists, because multiple interfaces and impacts of the implementation of CP in quality service dimensions perceived by customers were identified.