Responsabilidade social empresarial: percepções e práticas do empresariado salineiro do Rio Grande do Norte.

The debate around the thematic of Corporate Social Responsibility - CSR involves economic, social, cultural and symbolic aspects in the relations established between company and society. In Brazilian reality, the CSR, understood as enterprise actions, external and/or internal, that contributes to social and ambient improvement, gains greater visibility in 1990 decade. Although the significant increase of theoretical productions about CSR pertinent elements, it is still scarce the studies that treats about the relation company/society in the northeastern reality, and singularly, in Rio Grande do Norte. It was in this perspective, that, in being the salt industry one of most important in the potiguar economic history formation , the present work investigated practicies and perceptions of salt entrepreneurship about CSR. Considering all the Rio Grande do Norte salt industry history phases, since the period of the Brazil s settling, as well as the characteristics of the study object, was opted to the qualitative research, objectified in interviews half-structuralized realized with the salt segment entrepreneurs, as well as professionals of ambient management and human resources working in potiguar salt segment. The research main results indicated a coexistence between the mechanisms of management seated on personal and paternalists relations, typical of traditional salt industry, and the emergency of innovative elements typical of the modern management, like the CSR. In this context, a tension between continuity and rupture with the traditional mechanisms of management in salt entrepreneurship actions