Words not actions! The ideological role of sustainable development reporting

TLDR

Representations of sustainable development shape how businesses understand and act on sustainability, constraining and enabling specific actions. The study critically examines language and visual representations in corporate reporting and develops a framework that synthesizes the contested middle ground for future interpretive work. The authors employ synthesis, interpretive and discourse analysis on a corpus of New Zealand business association reports and early triple bottom line documents to construct this framework. The reports portray a pragmatic, middle‑ground discourse that claims businesses are acting sustainably, yet analysis reveals a narrow, primarily economic and instrumental view of the environment.

Abstract

Purpose Through an analysis of corporate sustainable development reporting, this paper seeks to examine critically language use and other visual (re)presentations of sustainable development within the business context. It aims to provide a framework to interpret and tease out business representations of sustainable development. Such representations are argued to be constitutive of the way that business has come to “know” and “do” sustainable development and, therefore, to constrain and enable particular actions and developments. Design/methodology/approach The study uses a mix of synthesis, interpretive and discourse analysis to locate, interpret and critically analyse a corpus of written and presentational texts produced by a New Zealand business association and eight of its founding members' early triple bottom line reports. Findings The business association and its members' reports are shown to present a pragmatic and middle‐way discourse on business and the environment. Through the use of rhetorical claims to pragmatism and action, this discourse suggests that businesses are “doing” sustainability. But critical analysis and interpretation within a wider framework reveal a narrow, largely economic and instrumental approach to the natural environment. Originality/value This paper offers a diagrammatic synthesis of the contested “middle ground” of the sustainable development debate, and thereby provides a frame of reference for further interpretational work on organisations and sustainable development.