Proposta de índice de sustentabilidade como instrumento de autoavaliação para micro e pequenas empresas (MPEs)

Currently, there is a great need for companies to consider the environmental, economic and social aspects of sustainability for responding to changing markets requirements. For medium and large companies, several instruments have been proposed and are available in the literature to measure the sustainability of these organizations towards this aim. However, in the context of micro and small enterprises (MSEs) the use of these indicators becomes difficult because of problems such as (i) lack of data; (ii) lack of information system; (iii) lack of people responsible for data collection; (iv) lack of people with the whole vision the processes; and (v) lack of strategic planning. MSEs are very important in any capitalist economy, which is also the Brazilian case. In this sense, the objective of this research was to propose an index of sustainability for MSEs as a self‐assessment instrument for sustainability measure. This study is an applied research developed from a conceptual model, including the elaboration of an instrument type form with questions related to environmental, social and economic aspects, for sustainability self‐assessment in micro and small businesses. The results achieved in this study corroborate with the definition of indicators for each aspect of sustainability in order to propose a quantitative measurement, including numerical and graphical content, to view the sustainability of MSEs objectively.