Beyond Sustainability Communication: Sustainability-integrated Corporate Communications

Abstract

Research on sustainable communication is mostly limited to sustainability communication without presenting a model of sustainable communication itself. As this article argues, two things can happen if communication itself does not follow the principles of sustainability: Sustainability communication will be less credible, and society will overlook the cornerstone of how to address and overcome discrepancies between corporate behaviour and corporate communicative behaviour. The fact that earth’s natural resources are limited, is not yet incorporated in corporate communication as practised by organisations. At the borders of sustainability and communication this paper therefore argues for the development and implementation of sustainability-integrated corporate communications.