Diverse areas of knowledge have addressed the traditional model of economic development and its impacts on the life of the planet. The debates provoke several demands on companies and claim for a re-dimensioning of their management models. The socio-environmental liability has become a fashionable term and many managerial practices and tools have been created to support the engagement and commitment process of the companies with and to a more sustainable society. In this thesis, by means of an ecological economy approach, there is the assumption that sustainable development implies the articulation between man`s sciences and natural sciences in which social structures are shaped coherently with patterns found in the natural ecosystems. Within this context, the main purpose of this research is to identify relations between some management tools as shared by the business community and focused on sustainability and ecological principals. Seven managerial tools shared by the business community for the achievement of strategies devoted to the sustainability of the companies and four ecological principals or basic fundaments of ecology, which are existent in the organization of ecosystems, were studied. Therefore, the intention hereby is to (1) identify the presence of management tools and ecological principals in the companies; (2) identify the association between management tools for sustainability and ecological principles as to their presence, scope and application; and (3) contribute for the theoretical and practical development of the themes under this study. Thus, this research is featured as descriptive and co-relational, under a quantitative focus and interdisciplinary character. Part of the Ethos Index Questionnaire was used as a research instrument, regrouped in nine categories based on the analysis of agglomerates and policoric correlations. The study comprehended 331 companies and counted with the valuable collaboration of the Ethos Institute in providing the 2008 Ethos Index databank. The statistic analysis of relationships between predicting variables and response under study was made through the ordinal logistic regression which allowed for the establishment of the occurrence probability of a given event and the importance of the variable. The results indicate a partial confirmation of the research hypothesis. The descriptive analysis evidenced that, among the four ecological principles under study, the management practices related to the dynamic balance are the less frequent in the companies. It was also verified that the management tools have associations that differ in regard to the ecological principles. In fact, negative and statistically significantly corelations were found. The findings allow for the conclusion that some management tools are more effective than others and that they complement one another.