"Sustainability and Sustainable Development" in: The ...

Sustainability and Sustainable Development RAHUL MITRA Wayne State University, USA

Sustainable development is defined as development that meets the needs of the present without jeopardizing future generations’ growth and prosperity, and involves the consideration of social, environmental and economic resources (Brundtland, 1987). By extension, sustainability may be conceived of as ongoing processes of organizing across government, nonprofit, and for-profit entities to enable sustainable development. Conceptually, then, sustainability and sustainable development are concerned with the longterm management of human and nonhuman resources, rather than short-term priorities (e.g., shareholder returns), and provide an alternative organizing framework to mainstream capitalism. Whereas “soft” versions of sustainability envision an inclusion of long-term logics in mainstream capitalism, more “radical” versions argue that extant political economic systems of organizing are severely flawed and need to be revised entirely. The issue of sustainability is both old and new in organizational communication scholarship. On the one hand, the field has long centered the complex relations between organizations and their impacted societies as one of its key problematics. Over the years, organization–society relationships have been probed in different ways, such as through corporate social responsibility (CSR), employee/labor relations, worker participation, and work–life balance issues. Nevertheless, organizational communication research has rarely embraced the term “sustainability” itself, even when studying the management of scarce resources for organizing systems. Recently, however, as interdisciplinary attention has settled on the issue of sustainable development with some fervor – given the ongoing complexities of climate change, global pollution, and population shifts, among others – the role of communication (and organizational communication in particular) has reached center stage in the meaningful implementation of sustainability.

Sustainability in organizational communication research Four broad areas of organizational communication research highlight sustainability: long-term organizational viability given the existence of multiple tensions, environmental CSR practices, corporate communication on broader environmental impacts, and resilience of complex adaptive systems. Research in these areas is published not just

The International Encyclopedia of Organizational Communication. Craig R. Scott and Laurie K. Lewis (General Editors), James R. Barker, Joann Keyton, Timothy Kuhn, and Paaige K. Turner (Associate Editors). © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. DOI: 10.1002/9781118955567.wbieoc201

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by communication scholars in the field’s traditional journals (e.g., Management Communication Quarterly), but also by those in other disciplines (e.g., management, sociology, psychology) focusing on the role of communication, in journals such as Organization and the Journal of Business Ethics.

Sustainability as organizational viability Perhaps the oldest and most implicit interpretation of sustainability found in research addresses not environmental or societal issues at all, but the negotiation of ongoing tensions within particular organizations for their long-term viability. Scholars have examined organizational paradoxes to trace how such entities may be able to sustain themselves, despite or perhaps because of such tensions, rather than collapse because of inherent inconsistencies. Both microlevel interpersonal and macrolevel organizational tensions have been examined, across for-profit and nonprofit organizations. For example, researchers have noted how organizations often struggle under ideology–viability tensions, faced with the need to enact social change while also remaining financially afloat (D’Enbeau & Buzzanell, 2011), or when different organizations must collaborate on specific issues and thus negotiate collective identity despite significant differences in their structures and mission statements (Koschmann, 2013). Organizational communication research in this vein prioritizes the long- versus short-term and mission oriented tensions of sustainability, focuses on organizational viability or the viability of interorganizational collaborations, and downplays the environmental implications of sustainable development.

Sustainability as corporate social responsibility A second area of research – more explicitly dealing with sustainability – tends to conflate both it and sustainable development with CSR initiatives. Organizational ethics and CSR have long been a cornerstone of organizational communication scholarship, examining the economic, environmental, social, and discretionary responsibilities of managers and firms to their various stakeholders. Several studies tend to view the environmental component of CSR, in particular, as sustainability – noting, for instance, how different organizations and industries formulate their institutional norms and actions related to environmental CSR, to enable more sustainable communities going forward (O’Connor & Gronewold, 2013). Scholars have traced how environmental CSR is driven by a combination of altruistic or strategic (i.e., “the business case”) factors, characterized by ongoing tensions about the voluntary versus regulatory mechanisms of CSR, and closely interlinked across traditional space–time settings to inaugurate a new era of “third generation” global CSR (Stohl, Stohl, & Popova, 2009). Critics have cautioned that sustainability may be just “in vogue” as the latest management “fashion,” like total quality management or participation circles, and could just as easily fall out of favor (Zorn & Collins, 2007). To summarize, this area of organizational communication research tends to view sustainability as a form of CSR – focused specifically on its environmental and social aspects – rather than constituting a separate framework of organizing in its


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own right. Discussions of sustainability are subsumed within broader discussions of organizational ethics and stakeholder responsibilities, and sustainability is largely treated as either altruistic or contributing to the “business case” for greater profit margins.

Sustainability as corporate communication of environmental impact Third, and arguably the largest, subset of organizational communication research on sustainability addresses corporate communication, reporting, and deliberation of organizational norms and strategies regarding environmental impact, in a variety of contexts (e.g., extraction industries, manufacturing). As per the Brundtland (1987) definition, sustainability is considered to be more than just environmental CSR, is associated with broader problems (e.g., climate change, conservation of forests and water), and is sought to be embedded within organizations’ everyday operations. This strand of research blends the long- versus short-term tensions and environmental preoccupations of the previous two areas, and extends it further by noting how organizations might integrate environmental and social impact consideration in their regular operations. A key topic of concern in this strand of research is the role of communication in shaping public opinion and mobilizing public action in the context of climate change – ranging from the communication of environmental and climate risks, to advocating precise actions individuals and communities may take, to the depiction of the climate crisis in media content. From an organizational communication perspective, climate change is the object of inquiry along three broad fronts. First, scholars have noted how climate change is framed by corporate discourse, such as annual reports and advertising campaigns, often to reiterate corporate legitimacy in the context of rapidly changing environmental conditions (Ihlen, 2009). Livesey (2002a), for instance, offers competing methodological tools of rhetorical criticism and Foucauldian discourse analysis to trace how oil giant ExxonMobil’s discourse on climate change is designed to preserve the primacy of economic values and the mythical “free market,” rather than broad based regulation, and subtly discourages radical grassroots organizing. Second, the import of key texts in the public sphere, which shape social and organizational actions on climate change, have also been examined. Budescu, Broomell, and Por (2009) analyzed the effect of texts put out by the United Nation’s premier policymaking agency on climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), concluding that most respondents ended up with risk based judgments contrary to the IPCC’s recommended guidelines – even when those guidelines were made explicitly available to them. More recently, Mitra (2016) analyzed the constitutive rhetoric of the “clean energy economy” in mainstream American discourse, finding that although traditional readings circumvented creative grassroots action, a broader interpretation of texts and organizations acting behind the scenes on climate change might serve to mobilize popular action and social movements. Finally, researchers have examined the communicative actions of activists and nonprofit organizations mobilizing for climate change, both through digital means to engage collective action (Bennett &

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Segerberg, 2011), and traditional mass media and face-to-face activism against powerful government/corporate interests (Mitra, 2013). An interesting example is provided by MacKay and Munro’s (2012) examination of the “information warfare” between ExxonMobil and Greenpeace, as they seek to influence public opinion and emotions on climate change. They argue that, as such organizations employ various discursive tactics against each other and other third parties, climate change effectively dismantles traditional boundaries and sets into motion new organizational “landscapes” that posit a new array of organizational–social rivalries and allies in conflict situations. When viewing sustainability as the organizational communication of environmental impact, the underlying concern for researchers, then, is how businesses and their stakeholders come to decide on specific interpretations that provoke particular action to be sustainable as part of ongoing activities (e.g., supply chain, distribution networks, manufacturing processes; see Allen, Walker, & Brady, 2012). Sustainability is thus sought to be “mainstreamed” as a form of organizational practice, enacted through communication, because the risks of not mainstreaming are seen to be too costly for organizations – in terms of consumer backlash, excessive government regulation, or wastage of key resources. Such scholarship recognizes, however, that “mainstreaming” within extant capitalism may dilute the transformative potential of sustainability and sustainable development. Scholars have thus highlighted the prevalence of greenwashing, or inauthentic communication with stakeholders on sustainable practices, and examined how unscrupulous organizations and managers might appropriate long-term and stakeholder oriented language without requisite steps on the ground – especially when they are dealing with marginalized stakeholders, located in the global South, or otherwise underprivileged populations (Munshi & Kurian, 2005). Critical researchers have noted the tensions between symbolic sustainability (or the “talk” of “being green”) and substantive sustainability (i.e., the “walk”), and the temptation for corporations to focus on the former while ignoring the latter, in an effort to save costs (Walker & Wan, 2012). Despite this temptation, however, research has established that ignoring substantive sustainability results in consumer censure and financial losses, as customers and regulators quickly figure out the mismatch between organizational rhetoric and practice (de Vries et al., 2015). Moreover, critical poststructural scholars aver that sustainability talk and eco-speak might serve an aspirational function, so that continued discussion of sustainability in the public sphere and industry circles eventually produces institutional pressures on organizations to walk the talk (Livesey, 2002b). Such theorists assert that in a hypermediated and increasingly globalized world, where organizational impacts, communities and stakeholders are interlinked, and the polyphony of sustainability discourse acts in the long run to shape broader actions and practices (Christensen, Morsing, & Thyssen, 2011) – so that, rather than dismiss short-term imbalances between rhetoric and practice as evidence of corporate hypocrisy, organizational communication scholars should trace the evolution of sustainability discourse over multiple sites and time periods for subtle changes. In other words, sustainability discourse becomes self-fulfilling, demonstrating the constitutive nature of communication whereby sustained pressure by internal and external stakeholders may transform underlying organizational practices to usher in more sustainable norms.


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Sustainability as systemic resilience Finally, a recent yet burgeoning area of organizational communication scholarship takes a systemic approach to sustainability and sustainable development, positing them as enabling organized resilience by and within complex adaptive systems, rather than the purview of a single organization (i.e., either as environmental CSR, or as mainstream organizational practice). Research in this vein extends the organization–society problematic of the field to consider the ongoing and contingent interaction among multiple stakeholders, rather than one-way reporting or even two-way dialogue. The meaning of systemic sustainability emerges through a complex process of articulation and translation, involving the negotiation of multiple interests and voices – sometimes in situations that were hitherto considered “intractable” (Brummans et al., 2008). Researchers have employed both quantitative and qualitative methods to trace how such complex systems may sustain themselves and their broader environments over time. For instance, the “symbiotic sustainability” framework proposes a complex model of organization–nonprofit negotiation of interests and concerns, in a dynamic setting, rather than assume static concerns for actors, so that the various entities strategically align themselves to further particular social, environmental, and organizational goals (Shumate & O’Connor, 2010). Organizational communication scholars have also sought to examine the application of citizenship frameworks and deliberation models to address organizational responses to ongoing social and environmental problems, noting how a lens of “sustainable citizenship” might offer a coherent organizing model to collaborate for sustainable development (Munshi & Kurian, 2015). Another important feature of this research is that the goal of sustainable organizing is not to transcend organizational viability, satisfying CSR expectations, or mainstreaming with existing operations. Rather, the transformative agenda of sustainable development is centered, so that engaging organizations – for-profit, nonprofit, or government – are explicitly concerned with reworking existing models of organizing, operating, and living with changed social and environmental conditions. In line with theoretical frameworks of resilience that seek to alter the status quo via innovative modes of inquiry, this emerging area of sustainable organizing scholarship emphasizes the role of systemic and organizational learning to embrace new opportunities and possibilities, despite adverse conditions of scarcity and uncertainty (Ganesh & Zoller, 2014). This orientation toward systemic resilience involves listening to new stakeholders, who might have been previously ignored, adopting new communicative practices (e.g., spectacle and critical dialogue at local, grassroots levels), and designing new measures and standards of success (e.g., risk mitigation models for communities threatened by climate change, or adopting new community models like transition networks or eco-cooperatives). Sustainability is thus interpreted broadly as integrating environmental, social, and economic concerns, while radically changing dominant structural formations. Although it is tempting to view these four areas of organizational communication research on sustainability as progressing linearly – with earlier studies focusing on organizational viability, and gradually moving toward resilience by complex systems – it should be noted that scholarship continues to proliferate in all of them.

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Moreover, these categories are far from watertight, and several studies might well fall into multiple camps.

Future directions While the field of organizational communication is a relative newcomer to the interdisciplinary study of sustainability, the term “sustainability” itself has long been a mainstay within the field – albeit with different meanings. In some respects, this is true of sustainability at large – given the still ongoing discussion of what sustainability is in a broader sense, and how it ought to be measured and then implemented by different entities. Even as sustainability remains a transgressive, interdisciplinary concept, organizational communication scholars are well-positioned to contribute to its conceptual development going forward. In particular, three broad directions may be identified on the basis of extant organizational communication research. First, given the interdisciplinary nature of sustainability, researchers should consider how multiple communicative concepts (and subfields) become relevant to sustainable organizing – such as rhetorical deliberation, critical dialogue, conflict negotiation, public relations, and environmental communication. Organizational communication scholars working on sustainability publish their work in a variety of forums, rather than just the traditional journals of the field, and this trend is expected to continue, as they further expand their repertoire and collaborate with academics from other disciplines, such as public policy, engineering, sociology, and business. This should also encourage organizational communication scholars to engage with the literature and theoretical concepts from other disciplines working on sustainable organizing, to reinterpret them with a communicative focus in mind, and thereby advance further understanding. For instance, even as communication scholars have begun to engage earnestly with the concept of “resilience,” drawing from disaster management, materials design, engineering, and other fields, there is scope for probing deeper into the communicative implications of resilient systems, nodes, and practices. Second, organizational communication scholars can help refine the meaning of “sustainability” itself, through the study of ongoing messages exchanged and social networks comprising contemporary systems. Providing conceptual clarity is especially important, given the significant interdisciplinary disagreement on what sustainable development actually means, and how it can be implemented meaningfully. Through their emphasis on message design and contextual interactions, organizational communication scholars can offer a user-specific definition of sustainability to aid policymakers and practitioners in their pursuit of sustainable development, and clarify meanings of popular terms like “the green economy,” or “clean energy.” Such a communicative approach to sustainable organizing requires transcending traditional stakeholder management theories to recognize newer terms and metaphors (e.g., citizenship), acknowledging how sustainability discourse serves aspirational needs for organizations and communities, examining the sociohistorical formation of sustainability policy, and adopting a systemic approach to reconceive sustainability as risk


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mitigation (Mitra & Buzzanell, 2015; see also the February 2015 issue of Management Communication Quarterly). Third, scholars should adopt a practice based approach to sustainable organizing – examining not just top-down directives from management, or broader societal messages about sustainability and sustainable development, but tracing how practitioners in different industries and contexts understand sustainability as they implement it as part of their everyday work. A practice based approach involves studying localized applications, opportunities, and challenges to sustainability in both for-profits and nonprofits, single organizations and interorganizational systems, connecting the microlevel interactions at hand with broader social/policy structures. Although there is a relative lack of such research, some studies have highlighted the ongoing meaning making, paradoxes and tensions that sustainability practitioners must negotiate as they work within extant capitalist setups (Phillips, 2013). These tensions involve the profit versus purpose goals of sustainability (especially within the corporate framework), the viable versus idealist paradox in a broader sense, and even deeper concerns of whether sustainability should be mandated and regulated top-down or sought to be adopted voluntarily at the grassroots level (despite the inexorably slow progress at voluntary adoption in most countries). Given how quickly the profession of environmental sustainability has grown worldwide, even as macrolevel policy and political support remains unclear, this is a vital area of study for organizational communication scholars who focus on the intersection of work, profession, and systemic policy. SEE ALSO: Alternative Forms of Organization and Organizing; Capitalism; Contradic-

tions and Paradox; Corporate Communication; Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR); Environment; Ethics; Learning Organization; Micro/Meso/Macro Levels of Analysis; Nonprofit/Nongovernment Organizations; Organization-Society Relationship; Resilience Processes; Risk Communication; Strategic Communication References Allen, M. W., Walker, K. L., & Brady, R. (2012). Sustainability discourse within a supply chain relationship: Mapping convergence and divergence. International Journal of Business Communication, 49, 210–236. doi:10.1177/0021943612446732 Bennett, W. L., & Segerberg, A. (2011). Digital media and the personalization of collective action. Information, Communication & Society, 14, 770–799. doi:10.1080/1369118x.2011.579141 Brummans, B. H. J. M., Putnam, L.L., Gray, B. J., Hanke, R., Lewicki, R. J., & Wiethoff, C. (2008). Making sense of intractable multiparty conflict: A study of framing in four environmental disputes. Communication Monographs, 75, 25–51. doi:10.1080/03637750801952735 Brundtland, H. (1987). Our common future. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press for the World Commission on Environment and Development. Budescu, D. V., Broomell, S., & Por, H.-H. (2009). Improving communication of uncertainty in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Psychological Science, 20, 299–308. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02284.x Christensen, L. T., Morsing, M., & Thyssen, O. (2011). The polyphony of corporate social responsibility: Deconstructing accountability and transparency in the context of identity and hypocrisy. In G. Cheney, S. May, & D. Munshi (Eds.), The handbook of communication ethics (pp. 457–474). New York, NY: Routledge.

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D’Enbeau, S., & Buzzanell, P. M. (2011). Selling (out) feminism: Sustainability of ideologyviability tensions in a competitive marketplace. Communication Monographs, 78, 27–52. doi:10.1080/03637751.2010.542472 de Vries, G., Terwel, B. W., Ellemers, N., & Daamen, D. D. L. (2015). Sustainability or profitability? How communicated motives for environmental policy affect public perceptions of corporate greenwashing. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 22, 142–154. doi:10.1002/csr.1327 Ganesh, S., & Zoller, H. M. (2014). Organizing transition: Principles and tensions in ecolocalism. In M. Parker, G. Cheney, V. Fournier, & C. Land (Eds.), The Routledge companion to alternative organization (pp. 236–250). New York, NY: Routledge. Ihlen, Ø. (2009). Business and climate change: The climate response of the world’s 30 largest corporations. Environmental Communication, 3, 244–262. doi:10.1080/17524030902916632 Koschmann, M. A. (2013). The communicative constitution of collective identity in interorganizational collaboration. Management Communication Quarterly, 27, 61–89. Livesey, S. M. (2002a). Global warming wars: Rhetorical and discourse analytic approaches to ExxonMobil’s corporate public discourse. International Journal of Business Communication, 39, 117–146. doi:10.1177/002194360203900106 Livesey, S. M. (2002b). The discourse of the middle ground: Citizen Shell commits to sustainable development. Management Communication Quarterly, 15, 313–349. doi:10.1177/0893318902153001 MacKay, B., & Munro, I. (2012). Information warfare and new organizational landscapes: An inquiry into the ExxonMobil–Greenpeace dispute over climate change. Organization Studies, 33, 1507–1536. doi:10.1177/0170840612463318 Mitra, R. (2013). From transformational leadership to leadership “trans-formations”: A critical dialogic perspective. Communication Theory, 23, 395–416. doi:10.1177/0893318912449314 Mitra, R. (2016). Re-constituting “America”: The clean energy economy ventriloquized. Environmental Communication, 10, 269–288. Mitra, R., & Buzzanell, P. M. (2015). Introduction: Organizing/communicating sustainably. Management Communication Quarterly, 29, 130–134. doi:10.1177/0893318914563573 Munshi, D., & Kurian, P. A. (2005). Imperializing spin cycles: A postcolonial look at public relations, greenwashing, and the separation of publics. Public Relations Review, 31, 513–520. doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2005.08.010 Munshi, D., & Kurian, P. (2015). Imagining organizational communication as sustainable citizenship. Management Communication Quarterly, 29, 153–159. doi:10.1177/0893318914563575 O’Connor, A., & Gronewold, K. L. (2013). Black gold, green earth: An analysis of the petroleum industry’s CSR environmental sustainability discourse. Management Communication Quarterly, 27, 210–236. doi:10.1177/0893318912465189 Phillips, M. (2013). On being green and being enterprising: Narrative and the ecopreneurial self. Organization, 20, 794–817. doi:10.1177/1350508412455084 Shumate, M., & O’Connor, A. (2010). The symbiotic sustainability model: Conceptualizing NGO–corporate alliance communication. Journal of Communication, 60, 577–609. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2010.01498.x Stohl, C., Stohl, M., & Popova, L. (2009). A new generation of corporate codes of ethics. Journal of Business Ethics, 90, 607–622. doi:10.1007/s10551-009-0064-6 Walker, K., & Wan, F. (2012). The harm of symbolic actions and green-washing: Corporate actions and communications on environmental performance and their financial implications. Journal of Business Ethics, 109, 227–242. doi:10.1007/s10551-011-1122-4 Zorn, T. E., Jr., & Collins, E. (2007). Is sustainability sustainable? Corporate social responsibility, sustainable business, and management fashion. In S. May, G. Cheney, & J. Roper (Eds.), The debate over corporate social responsibility (pp. 405–416). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.


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Further readings Bullis, C., & Ie, F. (2007). Corporate environmentalism. In S. May, G. Cheney, & J. Roper (Eds.), The debate over corporate social responsibility (pp. 321–335). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Chen, Y.-W., Milstein, T., Anguiano, C., Sandoval, J., Knudsen, L. (2012). Challenges and benefits of community-based participatory research for environmental justice: A case of collaboratively examining ecocultural struggles. Environmental Communication, 6, 403–421. doi:10.1080/17524032.2012.698291 Doyle, J. (2007). Picturing the clima(c)tic: Greenpeace and the representational politics of climate change communication. Science as Culture, 16, 129–150. doi:10.1080/09505430701368938 Frandsen, F., & Johansen, W. (2011). Rhetoric, climate change, and corporate identity management. Management Communication Quarterly, 25, 511–530. doi:10.1177/0893318911409663 Long, Z., Buzzanell, P. M., Wu, M., Mitra, R., Kuang, K., & Suo, H. (2015). Global communication for organizing sustainability and resilience. China Media Research, 11, 67–77. Nisbet, M. C., & Kotcher, J. E. (2009). A two-step flow of influence? Opinion-Leader campaigns on climate change. Science Communication, 30, 328–354. doi:10.1177/1075547008328797 Norton, T., Sias, P., & Brown, S. (2011). Experiencing and managing uncertainty about climate change. Journal of Applied Communication Change, 39, 290–309. doi:10.1080/ 00909882.2011.585397 Nyberg, D., Spicer, A., & Wright, C. (2013). Incorporating citizens: corporate political engagement with climate change in Australia. Organization, 20, 433–453. doi:10.1177/ 1350508413478585 Pal, M., & Jenkins, J. J. (2014). Reimagining sustainability: An interrogation of the Corporate Knights’ Global 100. Environmental Communication, 8, 388–405. doi:10.1080/17524032. 2014.906477 Plec, E., & Pettenger, M. (2012). Greenwashing consumption: The didactic framing of ExxonMobil’s Energy Solutions. Environmental Communication, 6, 459–476. doi:10.1080/17524032. 2012.720270 Roper, J. (2012). Environmental risk, sustainability discourse, and public relations. Public Relations Inquiry, 1, 69–87. doi:10.1177/2046147x11422147 Schons, L., & Steinmeier, M. (2015). Walk the talk? How symbolic and substantive CSR actions affect firm performance depending on stakeholder proximity. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management. Advance online publication. doi:10.1002/csr.1381 Sharma, A., & Kearins, K. (2011). Interorganizational collaboration for regional sustainability: What happens when organizational representatives come together? Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 47, 168–203. doi:10.1177/0021886310381782 Tregidga, H., Kearins, K., & Milne, M. (2013). The politics of knowing “organizational sustainable development.” Organization & Environment, 26, 102–129. doi:10.1177/1086026612474957 Zoller, H. M., & Tener, M. (2010). Corporate proactivity as a discursive fiction: Managing environmental health activism and regulation. Management Communication Quarterly, 24, 391–418. doi:10.1177/0893318909354116

Rahul Mitra is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Wayne State University, USA. His research focuses on sustainable organizing, transformational leadership, and careers/work. He has had work published in Human Relations, Environmental Communication, Management Communication Quarterly, Communication Theory, Journal of Business Ethics, International Journal of Business Communication, and the Handbook of Communication and Corporate Reputation, among others.