When Talk Is Not Cheap: The Performative Potentials of Strategic Sustainability Communication

Corporate sustainability communication is often met with stakeholder skepticism, focusing on what is perceived as insincerity and a lack of alignment with current sustainability practices. While acknowledging the significance of such skepticism, this chapter challenges common-sense understandings of sustainability communication as inherently cheap or inconsequential. Amidst urgent calls for substantial sustainability action, we explore the potential of strategic sustainability communication to catalyze further sustainability practices. Drawing on a performative perspective on communication, we focus on the conditions under which such communication can unfold its performative potential. We take our point of departure in a recent sustainability campaign by Apple Inc. in which the audience is invited to participate in a simulated meeting between the company’s sustainability staff and Mother Nature. Analyzing this campaign, we identify and discuss a set of processual boundary conditions for such communication to bring about more sustainable practices. Our performative communication perspective, in other words, offers an alternative to the conventional a priori denigration of sustainability claims. Ultimately, our analysis underscores the importance of strategic sustainable communication in advancing sustainability agendas and shaping responsible corporate behavior. At the same time, we do not suggest that such communication automatically or in any easy way unfolds into more sustainable corporate practices. Several factors, such as aspirational inflation, corporate self-absorption, stakeholder cynicism, and jamming, can disrupt the performative process and, eventually, prevent society from attaining its sustainability goals.