“What we deliver represents our biggest contribution to a more sustainable world” Discursive legitimation of sustainability in corporate website texts

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Journal ISSN
Volume Title
School of Business | Master's thesis
Date
2018
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Corporate Communication
Language
en
Pages
75 + 4
Series
Abstract
This study aims to contribute to the discussion on how corporations legitimate their own existence through legitimation of sustainability engagement. More specifically, the research focused on the discourses and legitimation strategies corporations use in their own texts to assure their audience that they are a legitimate societal actor, and therefore should be supplied resources to. The research was executed as a discourse analysis on six Finnish production companies’ sustainability website texts. The data consisted of the sustainability websites’ front pages and descriptions of Approach to sustainability and Sustainability areas. Two opposing discourses were found to be used: Sustainability as an asset, which holds the idea of sustainability contributing to the organization’s operations positively and Sustainability as a liability, i.e. an obligation that has to be fulfilled. Six discursive themes under these were identified, which respectively from asset to liability were: Business core, Stakeholders, External valuation, Business impact, Moral obligation and Laws and regulations. The findings suggest that a stronger legitimacy can be achieved through strategic implications of sustainability, i.e. viewing it as an asset, where legitimacy can primarily be achieved through normalization and rationalization. Legitimacy increased through outsourcing the decision of important aspects to stakeholders through prospective normalization, as well as giving the authority to judge sustainability outside the company, through using authorization. Legitimation through the liability discourse seems to be in place especially if appealing to humanistic values when talking about employees or communities, with moralization primarily used to achieve legitimacy. Sustainability has been found to produce legitimacy to an organization’s existence, and therefore stronger stakeholder engagement. This study extends the knowledge of how corporations’ responsibilities today go beyond making profit, and especially how corporations seek to assure their audiences of their responsibility.
Description
Thesis advisor
Eräranta, Kirsi
Keywords
legitimation, sustainability, corporate social responsibility, discourse analysis
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