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This paper aims to present the results of an analysis of two hypotheses on maintenance in manufacturing industries: the first hypothesis refers to managers' perception of planning maintenance when undertaking certain practices, and the second hypothesis to the behavior of manufacturing companies that consider their maintenance sector a source of competitive advantage for their organization.

The research study is carried out in medium‐sized and large manufacturing companies in a large metropolitan area of Northeastern Brazil. An exploratory analysis is made of the variables considered representative for this study. Data are collected from a probability sampling of companies selected randomly and in which interviews are later held. Analyses are performed in order to identify associations that validate the hypotheses constructed. The hypotheses are tested and can be explained by variables presented in the paper.

It is observed that some maintenance practices are currently correlated to the manager's perception of planning for maintenance and the treatment given to the area of maintenance displays a positive relationship with the perception of management in relation to maintenance as a source of competitive advantage for the organization.

The results obtained from this paper will assist maintenance engineers with understanding how the maintenance manager perceives planning and competitiveness and also what maintenance actions should in fact be implemented. The findings have yielded more knowledge of the maintenance environment and using this knowledge will be able to improve maintenance performance.

The results of this study are relevant for the maintenance area and will enable it to pay more attention to issues relating to planning and to the competitiveness of organizations. The advantages of probability sampling are also demonstrated, as is the fact that the findings from the statistical analysis can be generalized to the population investigated.

We present a critical literature review debating Brazilian research on social and environmental accounting (SEA). The aim of this study is to understand the role of politics in the construction of hegemonies in SEA research in Brazil. In particular, we examine the role of hegemony in relation to the co-option of SEA literature and sustainability in the Brazilian context by the logic of development for economic growth in emerging economies. The methodological approach adopts a post-structural perspective that reflects Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. The study employs a hermeneutical, rhetorical approach to understand and classify 352 Brazilian research articles on SEA. We employ Brown and Fraser’s (2006) categorizations of SEA literature to help in our analysis: the business case, the stakeholder–accountability approach, and the critical case. We argue that the business case is prominent in Brazilian studies. Second-stage analysis suggests that the major themes under discussion include measurement, consulting, and descriptive approach. We argue that these themes illustrate the degree of influence of the hegemonic politics relevant to emerging economics, as these themes predominantly concern economic growth and a capitalist context. This paper discusses trends and practices in the Brazilian literature on SEA and argues that the focus means that SEA avoids critical debates of the role of capitalist logics in an emerging economy concerning sustainability. We urge the Brazilian academy to understand the implications of its reifying agenda and engage, counter-hegemonically, in a social and political agenda beyond the hegemonic support of a particular set of capitalist interests.