Creating Adventures in Wonderland: The Journey Metaphor and Environmental Sustainability

TLDR

The journey metaphor frames sustainability as a process of adaptation and progress, yet obscures the ultimate destination businesses claim to pursue. This paper critically examines how the journey metaphor is used in corporate sustainability discourse. The authors argue that framing sustainability as a journey lets commentators sidestep debates about desirable future states and can inadvertently reinforce business‑as‑usual practices.

Abstract

This paper provides a critical exploration of the journey metaphor promoted in much business discourse on sustainability—in corporate reports and advertisements, and in commentaries by business and professional associations. The portrayal of ‘sustainability as a journey’ evokes images of organizational adaptation, learning, progress, and a movement away from business-as-usual practices. The journey metaphor, however, masks the issue of towards what it is that businesses are actually, or even supposedly, moving. It is argued that in constructing ‘sustainability as a journey’, business commentators and other purveyors of corporate rhetoric can avoid becoming embroiled in debates about future desirable and sustainable states of affairs—states of affairs, perhaps, which would question the very raison d’être for some organizations and their outputs. ‘Sustainability as a journey’ invokes a subtle and powerful use of language that appears to seriously engage with elements of the discourse around sustainable development and sustainability, but yet at the same time, paradoxically, may serve to further reinforce business-as-usual.