Análise das inter-relações entre adoção de tecnologia sustentável, legitimidade e reputação no mercado, com base na teoria institucional

Abstract

The tourism industry continues to be impacted by new technologies. Technology is also responsible for connecting the sustainable perspective to the intelligent use of resources, resulting in the development of the organization combined with the macro development of tourism. This is a gap to be explored as the industry adopts sustainable technology. Institutional Theory discusses isomorphism as a result of the institutional pressures/forces of the institutional environment that may affect organizations in adopting some practices and has been used to explain the adoption of technologies in various industry sectors, but in the tourism literature, it has not been considered. The study has a qualitative approach with multiple data collection techniques. The research used as universe the lodging sector. The first step was mapping sustainable technologies used by establishments in order to identify aspects related to the institutional environment of hotels and their use. The second step of the research consisted in conducting interviews with hotel managers to assess their perceptions and understand the motivations leading to the adoption of STs and the main existing pressures. Third and the last stage consists of analyzing the hotels' virtual environment, using their websites, online travel agency advertisements, and social media information as data sources. Data triangulation was applied to generate categories of analysis with the help of NVivo software for data organization and exploration. The results identified that the legitimization process of organizations can be achieved through online reputation. In addition, it was highlighted that the adoption of sustainable technologies occurs mainly by the economic factor in which, according to the data, environmental issues seem disconnected and with limited relevance to the hotels' practices. The study contributes to the understanding of institutional forces in organizations, with the institutional theory being an alternative among the traditional models used in tourism to analyze the adoption of technologies, in this case, sustainable ones.