Keywords: institutional entrepreneurship, institutional work, green chemistry, sustainability

Sustainability is a recurring theme in the business. In its beginning the theme was incorporated by companies by doing isolated social projects; nowadays, sustainability has become part of business strategy, particularly with the creation of sustainable products. This change occurred primarily because of sustainability’s institutionalization in the market as well as by individual or organizational agency. One of the industries that have major challenges in this picture is the petrochemical sector because its main raw material is oil, a non-renewable source, which in the long run is economically unfeasible. Moreover, its operation can cause several negative environmental impacts such as oil spills in the seas, damaging the marine ecosystem, episode that happened with BP petroleum in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. In the search for a new paradigm in this industry, companies are researching renewable raw materials for products that are currently derived from petroleum. Brazil is known for replacing fossil fuels such as gasoline and diesel, for renewable energy (ethanol).

In this context, two fields come together, petrochemical and sugar cane, seeking to develop a plastic from sugar cane (Silva, Lacerda and Junior Jones, 2005). The surveys to launch this product have occurred since the 70s, but it wasn’t economically viable. In 2009, Braskem, a Brazilian petrochemical company, produced the first economically viable polyethylene in the world made with 100% renewable material. With the introduction of this product, it marked the creation of the field of green chemistry in Brazil and also extends the possibility of creating a market/field for plastics made from 100% renewable material in the world.

This case is interesting for institutional theory because the transformation/creation of this polyethylene occurred with the coalition/union of two fields in which strategic sustainability was not institutionalized: petrochemical and sugar cane. However, these two fields participate in a macro, societal field, in which strategic sustainability is normalized. This address the argument of Kaghan and Lounsbury (2011) that institutional researches about institutional work - the intentional action of individuals and organizations to create, maintain and disrupt institutions (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006) - need to understand all the “social worlds”, micro and macroworlds, in which actors participate and the frameworks related to those worlds, because they shape how actors act and interact with each other, consequently, they shape institutional work.

With that in mind, we aim to understand the institutional work made by institutional entrepreneurs in the process of launching and marketing the green polyethylene. More specifically, our goal is to understand how the different fields (petrochemical, sugarcane, and societal macro field) shaped the institutional work of institutional entrepreneurs to create a new field.

To conduct this research we developed a descriptive case study, in which data were collected through semi-structured interviews and documents, with participants from petrochemical (including Braskem) and sugarcane organizations that participates in the emerging field of green chemistry in Brazil.

Some of our preliminary finding suggested that the union of the microfields (petrochemical and sugarcane) occurred because some actors working in one field had previously worked in the other. That allowed these actors to have both frameworks to search for solutions when strategic sustainability spread and the necessity to create sustainable products emerged. Also, because sustainability is institutionalized in society, it required less political abilities to convince the market about the new product, although it is sold, for now, to a niche.