Cleaner Production is a methodology to improve environmental sustainability in manufacturers. Due to its importance for sustainable development, the United Nations and many regional networks have taken on the responsibility to diffuse Cleaner Production methodology. After more than ten years of activity, however, these networks are facing significant and recurrent organizational barriers, which limit their performance. The theories of "networked organizations" for innovation have provided the constructs to conduct a case study about a networked organization inside a multinational company, which operates in numerous manufacturers worldwide. This company has increased its environmental performance three times in terms of prevented pollution and multiplied the number of Cleaner Production projects eight times after implementing a networked organizational structure to increase its capabilities for project management and process improvement. In order to explain the reasons for such increased environmental performance, the paper uses the "Enterprise Knowledge Development" (EKD) methodology to model the objectives, rules and processes of this corporation's Cleaner Production Program, as well as its actor relationship structures, which have enabled innovative capacity to improve in terms of environmental sustainable innovations in manufacturers.
Cleaner Production; networked organizations; six sigma; EKD Modeling
