The Evolution of the Sustainability Story: Strategic Sustainability Communication as Niche Construction

ABSTRACT

In this article, the evolutionary perspective is applied as a heuristic to explore strategic sustainability communication as communicative niche construction at the intersection of organizations and their environment over the past decades. Within the sustainability story and frames that organize the narratives, corporates as ‘species’ not only adapt to their constantly changing environment (communicative cultivation of new values within the organization) but also impact their environment, change cultural patterns, and co-construct their own socio-ecological niche (niche construction through communication). The evolution of the strategic sustainability story can be observed in the development of corporate non-financial reporting over the past three decades. This article utilizes a mixed-methodologically designed content analysis of a sample of (n =) 250 “Environment(al) Reports” from the 1990s, later entitled as “CSR Reports” (2000–2015), and today as “Sustainability Reports”. The sample has been taken from 15 internationally operating energy corporates within a time span of 30 years. After the theoretical conceptualization, the methodology and the findings of the study are presented along with a discussion of the limitations of the analysis. Finally, future potential of the evolutionary psychology approach to study and conceptualize strategic communication and of transposing the framework of biological niches to the corporate world, is discussed.

Introduction

Sustainability is not only a principle of action. Sustainability is a norm of regenerative practices and resource restoration, manifested in and supported by the United Nations in their 17 Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs, United Nations, 2022). It is increasingly established as a label or linguistic token used to describe individual behavior as more (or less) sustainable (Weder, 2019). First attempts in a growing field of sustainability communication research differentiate between the communication of sustainability (pragmatic, functional understanding of communication, informing and educating people about certain ‘sustainable products’), communication about sustainability (conversations about more or less sustainable choices, political debates) and communication for sustainability (participatory approaches, questioning non-regenerative principles and imbalances in human-nature relationships, critique, sense and meaning-making, social learning) (Golob et al., 2022; Newig et al., 2013; Weder, 2022b). Weder (2022a) diagnoses a dominance of communication of sustainability as a reason behind the mentioned tokenistic use (and abuse) of sustainability in marketing and business communication. This is supported by the increasing body of research seeking to further optimize communication of sustainability (Golob et al., 2022). However, there is less research done on the role of strategic communication and public relations in the evolution of the sustainability story as the strategic story that it is today. Consequently, the question of what role strategic communication potentially plays in ‘cultivating’ and ‘normalizing’ a new cultural pattern or norm like sustainability within organizations and beyond, needs to be asked as well (Horcea-Milcu, 2022; Krzyżanowski, 2020; Weder, 2022a).

Thus, the article at hand focuses on narratives and frames as organizing principles of communication that are persistent over time and meaningfully structure the social world. Therefore, frames are the central communication mode in a consilient understanding of strategic communication as a communicative cultivation process – again: within organizations and beyond the organizations’ environment (Klinghoffer, 2017; Weder, 2022a). This specific focus on strategic communication is complemented by an evolutionary perspective as a heuristic to understand the emergence of narratives in general and the sustainability story over time which is embedded in a cultural evolutionary perspective. With this approach, we can, firstly, unpack narrative and discursive strategies and thus the specific use of certain organizing principles (frames) and potential changes in framing over time as a reaction to changing environments (adaptation). Secondly, it holds the potential to better understand the impact of strategic communication on the organizational environment (strategic selection of a specific narrative as co-construction). Because the sustainability story is not only a narrative used to adapt to processes of change or crisis (climate crisis, social change) but also a strategic story that businesses select on purpose to create their own socio-ecological niches and create new opportunities and potential for action. Corporates as ‘species’ change the conditions (rules and resources) and have an ‘evolutionary response’ in terms of being part of larger societal transition processes.

The study presented in this article does not look at communicative cultivation processes within organizations (see Weder, 2022a). Instead, it focuses on these responses and processes of co-creation and, thus, on niche construction through communication at the intersection of organizations and their environment. This is supported by an empirical exploration of the evolution of the strategic sustainability story in external communication endeavors, in particular: corporate reporting. The quantitative and qualitative content analysis was applied to a sample of (n =) 250 “Environment(al) Reports” from the 1990s, later entitled “CSR Reports” (2000–2015), and more recently labeled as “Sustainability Reports” of 15 internationally operating energy corporates within a time span of 30 years.

Corporate non-financial reporting has been analyzed and explored for decades and from many perspectives: Gray (2010) or Gray and Bebbington (2000) for example looked at the reporting of organizational impacts on their immediate environment beyond their financially accountable actions. Milne (Milne & Gray, 2010; Tregidga & Milne, 2006) studied how (much) CSR or sustainability reporting reflects not only how the organization understands sustainability but also how it wishes to understand it. Challenges articulated from a communication and organizational communication perspective are the aspirational character of corporate CSR/sustainability reporting (Christensen et al., 2013; Pollach, 2015; Trittin-Ulbrich, 2022), the lack of actual negotiations within organizations that the reporting grounds in (Roper, 2005; Weder, 2022b) and the lack of connection between the organizational behavior and actual changes in their environment.

Niche construction through communication can be unpacked through an innovative analytical approach of looking at sustainability frames and their development over time. The findings suggest that there is room for learnings for future applications of evolutionary theory, evolutionary psychology and especially the concept of niche construction through communication. Further, strategic storytelling as twofold, as the oscillation of adaptation and selection, will be discussed at the end of the article. This seems to be particularly crucial in times of global crises and the big question of how to further cultivate a new normative order for post-growth narratives of our economic and political systems and a new relevance of organizations in societal transformation processes.

Theoretical framework

The overarching question for this article was what role strategic communication played in shaping sustainability as a guiding principle of individual and organizational action over the past decades related to crisis situations (climate, health, energy insecurity, war). Further, how does strategic communication facilitate a way to participate in and impact processes of social and cultural change and co-construct a new normative order of regenerative principles and related rules and cultural patterns – within and beyond organizational contexts. The sub-question that specifically guided the research project presented in this article was how sustainability as a strategic story evolved in and through corporate reporting. In this theory section, the evolution of sustainability as a strategic story is conceptualized and explained as niche construction through communication.

Cultural evolution and niche construction

The attempt to trace back and unpack the evolution of the sustainability story led us, firstly, to evolutionary theory and the concept of cultural evolution. The basic idea of evolutionary or theory is that species changed their characteristics over several generations which relies on the processes of adaptation and natural selection. This explains how life on Earth has diversified into a massive variety of different species over time (Popper, 1978; Thagard & Findlay, 2010). Another aspect of evolutionary thinking is the selection principles of variation and diversification; these are processes by which species adapt over time in response to their changing environment. It is a debate manifested in countless books, articles and ‘pop-science bestsellers’ (Buranyi, 2022).

Through a communication perspective, evolutionary theory as a meta-theoretical perspective (Kaplan, 1987; Luhmann, 1982; Lull, 2019) or meta-theory in public relations research (Greenwood, 2010) or linguistics (Nowak & Komarova, 2001) has been adapted in strategic communication (Christensen & Svensson, 2017; Nothhaft, 2016; Seiffert-Brockmann, 2018). Most of the evolutionary approaches focus on adaptation to changes in organizations. However, what is less conceptualized and researched is the question of how (much) organizations induce social change and form and cultivate new rules, cultural patterns and potentially establish new norms and values – like sustainability.

Here, cultural evolutionary theory, which is an important component of studies in human ecology, demography, and social change (Auguste Comte, see Pickering, 2011; Spencer, 1898; Thomas & Van de Fliert, 2014), helps to better understand the impact of individuals, groups, and organizations on their environment. Theories of cultural evolution have to be distinguished from theories within evolutionary psychology, even though both perspectives apply evolutionary ideas to the explanation of cultural phenomena. While evolutionary psychology regards the human mind as evolving through a process of selection based on genetically inherited variation, cultural evolutionary theorists assign much more attention to processes where culture and ‘cultural capital’ is created (Laland, 2018).

Still, this theoretical framework doesn’t precisely capture the impact of individuals or organizations on the environment. Thus, the so-called niche construction perspective was introduced and established by the evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin (1983). Lewontin emphasized that species, individuals, or organisms do not just passively adapt through selection or create cultural capital along the way, but actively construct important components of their specific environments, or ‘niches’. While niche construction theory generally is discussed and sometimes disputed, from a strategic communication perspective, it contains huge potential to look at the threefold adaptation, selection, and co-construction processes. In other words, processes by which an organization impacts and potentially alters its own (local) environment, beliefs, norms, and values. Niche construction means that constituents in the environment adapt to organizational activities. This means that from a strategic perspective, organizations can choose or potentially modify relevant threats as well as the possibilities and options for future action.

Niche construction theory in particular helps to understand the ‘emergence’ of a new narrative not only as adaptation to a new game (playing the game by the rules) or as a change of the rules of the game but also a change that results in reorganization or creation of opportunities (Luksha, 2008). A new niche, for example, non-financial or sustainability reporting, results in the sustained change in patterns of strategic activities, which then can be described as less planned but ‘emergent’. Luksha further differentiates between ungoverned and governed (strategic) niche construction (p. 274 ff.), based on work-s by Dawkins (2004). Organizations often face unexpected changes in their environment, be it events, a crisis scenario, or behavior-al changes of their competitors. The emergence of the #blacklivesmatter-movement, again with selection and adaptation processes, is an example for corporate activism or social justice-related projects within organizations.

Niche construction through communication: connections between organizational communication and public relations?

As mentioned, the role of communication (strategies) in niche construction is rarely discussed or is only singularly emphasized from a business perspective (e.g., in Luksha’s work, Luksha, 2008) or from an environmental management perspective describing stakeholder relations as ‘co-evolutionary’ (e.g., Cantwell et al., 2010 or McLaren & Markusson, 2020; Norgaard, 1995). However, the idea of niche construction can be supported and complemented by, firstly, public relations models that describe an organization as embedded in wider stakeholder networks and strategic communication as a reaction to expectations and changes in its environment (e.g., Freeman & Velamuri, 2006; Hallahan et al., 2007; Weder, 2022b; Zerfass et al., 2018). Secondly, critical approaches in public relations theory can be linked to the concept of niche construction. These linkages happen because they describe strategic communication as being related to changes in organizational environments (Cutlip et al., 1994), as cultural and social practice (Ihlen & van Ruler, 2009), and point to the constructive and transformative potential of strategic communication being more radical (Pompper, 2015) or at least agonistic (Davidson, 2018; Weder, 2022b; Winkler & Thummes, 2021). Thirdly, Seiffert-Brockmann (2018) brings in an evolutionary psychology perspective, where strategic communication is further conceptualized as a process of problematization and questioning. This process creates communicative moments which trigger people and certain parts of their minds to adapt, change and modify attitudes, behavior and (most importantly from the here represented perspective) change their values and norms. Lastly, there is also a connection of niche construction theory with critical organizational communication theory where organizational environments are described as ‘invented’ by organizations. In other words, there is a meta-level of selection by which organizations construct and/or enact their own environments (managerial choices, stakeholder mapping, dialogues etc (Daft & Weick, 1984; Weick, 1988, 1995). Weick further explains that whenever people interact, they “unrandomize variables, insert vestiges of orderliness, and literally create their own constraints” (Weick, 1988, p. 243). Also, the way that meanings and cultural patterns are adapted by organizational actors can guide further learning processes so that shared meaning emerges (Taylor & Robichaud, 2004; Winkler & Etter, 2018).

Niche construction through communication is supported and complemented by these consilient approaches to strategic communication. Through these approaches, it is possible to explain the role of strategic communication in establishing new meanings and values within an organization and, as is the focus of this article, its socio-ecological environment. However, we need to better understand how ‘adaptation’ and ‘selection’ work as communication modes, how niches are communicatively constructed; therefore, a narrative perspective on frames as selection and organization principle is introduced in the following.

Framing as a principle of adaptation and selection in niche construction through communication

To understand how niches are constructed narratives are introduced as organizing elements of communication. Frank (2017) explains the constructive potential in narratives in the following way: “(…) if we can change narratives, we change something fundamental in the moral and political constitution of the society; thus, it is in narrative that new visions of sustainable living begin” (p. 312). This goes hand in hand with Luksha’s concept of governed (strategic) niche construction which requires

1. framing that creates a seed of a potential new construct,

2. a communicative strategy that conveys the construct and

3. the related learning processes within and outside of the organization.

Within the presented understanding of niche construction through communication, frames are understood as organizing principles in the creation and (re)production of larger narratives. Therefore, framing is seen as a core mechanism, which follows or includes evolutionary principles. Frames are the key construct in which the emergence of a certain new meaning is manifested. They are a pattern or manifestations of ‘sense’ that potentially change over time, following the principles of adaptation and selection.

In media and communication theory, frames are described either broadly as holistic or generic (Gerhards & Rucht, 1992; Snow & Benford, 1992; Weder, 2021) or rather issue-specific (De Vreese, 2012; Weder, 2012). An issue-specific frame is further interpreted as a position or argument based on an opinion, it is the ‘heart of narratives’, the essence of an issue (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989, p. 3) that gives meaning to the issue. In the related literature, frames are also discussed as selection principles, patterns of meaning that work as a stimulus for larger sets of related meaning, which are called ‘narratives’, as introduced above (Weder & Dobrić, 2021). From an evolutionary psychology perspective, frames are persistent patterns of cognition, interpretation, presentation, selection, emphasis, and exclusion, by which certain symbol-handlers (such as organizations with their strategic communication efforts) organize their communication processes within in the organization and beyond. Frames as organizing principles of communication must be linked to the process of framing, a process that symbolically and meaningfully structures the social world (Reese, 2007) via the repeated combination of problematization, offering causality and moral evaluation as well as solutions (Entman, 1993).

The characteristics of adaptation and selection processes are variation, inheritance, and time (Darwin, 2017; Pirlet, 2005). So, if frames create a narrative, and produce, reproduce, and manifest a certain narrative over time, then the principle of variation is the first linkage in bringing media, communication theory and evolutionary psychology together. Variation in niche construction means that with framing as a core communication mode, single events, occasions and actions within organizations and their environment are communicatively picked up and ‘talked about’. Variation permits selection (Pirlet, 2005). The principle of heredity describes the passing on, the relatedness and the resemblance of certain frames so that the principle of selection is a composite of the forces that are related to survival and reproduction. Selection in evolutionary theory determines which characteristics are passed on (or down) to permit living beings to adjust to, e.g., crises, climate-related changes and environmental changes – and to do this in a better way than other entities of similar character, other ‘species’. Frames are used in strategic communication as methods to gradually introduce, question, and problematize. Frames perpetuate existing or potentially new communicative patterns of representing social (political, corporate, NGO etc.) actors, their issues and their constructions of the environment. Frames may create a potentially new normative socio-ecological order – which leads back to processes of niche construction described above.

To summarize, the conceptualization of niche construction through communication lays the ground for the analysis of the evolution of the sustainability story: The evolutionary principles of selection and adaptation lead to production and reproduction (Darwin, 2017; Dennett, 1995) – here of a certain narrative, namely the sustainability story. Frames are the communicative manifestation of those evolutionary principles. In the following, we will present the methodological framework that directed the analysis of the evolution of the sustainability story in non-financial corporate reporting.

Methodology

The study at hand seeks to explore the evolution of the sustainability narrative in corporate reporting over the past decades. It also seeks to identify the role of strategic communication in the transition process from the story of climate change and environmental problems to, firstly, a story about responsibility and corporate citizenship and, secondly, to the ‘new’ narrative of sustainability (Chandra, 2018; Coulter et al., 2019; Hendersson & Wamsler, 2019; Van der Leeuw, 2019).

The first policy documents and mainly the Brundtland report (Hauff, 2007) stimulated the earliest reporting of activities, programs, and ambitions to tackle environmental problems from a corporate perspective. In the beginning, they were produced and labeled as ‘environmental reports’ (Buhr, 2002; Davis-Walling & Batterman, 1997; Halme & Huse, 1997) and, by that time, often criticized as an ‘exercise in public relations’ (Cerin, 2002) or ‘add on’ to annual financial reports. While environmental reporting was voluntary, it was mostly about recognition, reputation and displaying awareness of a beginning ecological crisis. This changed with the concepts of Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Social Responsibility, leading to a much deeper reflection about dimensions of responsibility (environmental and social next to economic). This was theoretically and philosophically supported by concepts and research in business ethics (see i.e., Freeman & Velamuri, 2006; Goel & Ramanathan, 2014) and corporate communication (Rasche et al., 2017; Schultz et al., 2013). Now, there is a decent body of knowledge around CSR communication (Golob et al., 2013; Diehl et al., 2017; Ihlen et al., 2011 and more) and CSR reporting (overview in Khan et al., 2020), discussing expectations, impact, accountability, standardization, and differences related to culture, size or organizational scope and beyond. CSR reporting dominated corporate communication from the mid-1990s to 2005, when the first ‘corporate sustainability reports’ were published (Buhr, 2010; Gray, 2010; R. Hahn & Kühnen, 2013; Herzig & Schaltegger, 2006; Kolk, 2004; Pollach, 2015; Tschopp & Huefner, 2015). Today, sustainability reporting seems to dominate CSR or environmental reporting – however, it is slowly merging into ‘ESG reporting’ (Bose, 2020) and new forms of presenting the sustainability narrative.

What made these changes happen over time? And are they governed or ungoverned? What are the frames that manifested the new niche story?

A sample of (n =) 250 corporate reports, in the 1990s called “Environment(al) report”, then reframed as CSR-reports, followed more recently by “Sustainability reports” of international operating energy corporates (n = 15, see Table 1) were used as a text corpus (Bryman, 2016) to find patterns of the abovementioned sustainability narrative by identifying frames and how the framing changed over time, following the principles of evolution. Thus, the material serves to trace back the evolution of a new narrative of sustainability.

Table 1. Sample of reports/energy corporates, country and start of annual publication of environmental, CSR and sustainability reports.

Company	Country	First report published in …
RWE	Germany	1998
EON	USA	2004
GAZPROM	Russia	2005
ENEL	Italy	2009
KELAG	Austria	2005
OMV	Austria	2006
KEPCO	Korea	2005
Vattenfall	Sweden	2011
AGL	Australia	2007
Origin	Australia	2002
Royal Dutch Shell	Netherlands	1998
BP	UK	1998
Exxon Mobil	USA	2008
Reliance Industry	India	2004
PetroleoBrasil	Brazil	2018

The approach presented is the first attempt to work with the massive amount of data that was gathered with the 250 reports. The CEO messages within the reports were the main unit of analysis. These were analyzed through topics and frames to draw conclusions about the evolution of the sustainability story. These messages sit usually at the beginning of the reports and summarize the main messages and the issues tackled in the report as well as the overarching narrative. If the report did not feature a message from the management, board, or CEO, we looked at an equivalent opening statement or analyzed the narrative parts of the report. With this approach, and after a process of data cleaning (Bryman, 2016), we were able to look at 219 units that were analyzed with a qualitative content analysis.

Complementary to the analysis of dominant issues and topics, the explorative part of the study focused predominantly on language elements and frames. So far, existing frame studies on sustainability differentiate between either economic, social, or environmental frames (Culloty et al., 2019; Fischer et al., 2017; T. Hahn et al., 2014; Holt & Barkemeyer, 2012). Another framing approach is represented in studies around renewable energy, looking at risk and security as well as public concerns and differentiating again more broadly between economic, environmental, technolog-ical, political, and civil society perspectives (i.e., Djerf-Pierre et al., 2016). Instead of an inductive categorization, we chose a question-led approach used in qualitative content analyses (Mayring, 2020) and inductive category formation in two steps with different degrees of abstraction. The questions for this specific form of analysis were developed along the characteristics of evolution:

1. Variation:

Organizations differ in their ‘genetic makeup’, in their identity, producing many variations of frames. Q: What are the patterns of the story (frames) that is told? (i.e., resource scarcity, protection and stability, conservation, economic advantage, competition, growth etc.)

2. Inheritance and time:

Organizations are not always consistent in what stories they tell and how. Q: What are patterns (frames) that are passed on to their “report-offspring”? Which patterns stay over time as narrative?

The combination of quantitative and qualitative content analysis maximized the validity of the multiple-method design for data collection and, thus, the amount of usable data as well as the degree of confidence in the gathered data and insights. This is true, particularly, for the explorative technique applied to analyze the frames and principles of evolution with open ‘questions’ (two-step categorization with QCA map, Mayring, 2021; Mayring & Fenzl, 2019).

For the first step of categorization, we defined word sequences and phrases as the smallest component in the so called ‘context unit’ (CEO message or opening statement) that was coded as a clear meaning component (seme) in the text. The text analysis was performed (with multiple codings) in the online tool www.QCAmap.org (Fenzl & Mayring, 2017). Categories as well as meta- categories which have been developed in the second step of categorization to identify the narratives were determined by concepts and theoretical grounds described in the theory section above and methodological background. The frequencies of the categories were understood as an indicator of the weighting across all cases.

Findings

The presentation of the findings focuses on the frames represented in the analyzed corporate reporting and the narratives that were detected in the material with the two-step categorization process. This is followed by an explorative analysis along the principles of evolution, looking at the changes in framing over time.

Frames of sustainability

After coding identifiers like the company, the year the report was published, the report title, and if the report had a personalized CEO message, the first research interest was focused on the dominant topics and frames used in environmental, CSR and sustainability reporting. Working on topics and themes, we excluded energy and fuel efficiency and renewable energy as dominant topics from the list due to a bias related to the sample (energy corporations) and ended up with 62 unique topics. Overall, climate change led the list of topics covered in the reports, followed by workplace and factory security, especially in the first phase of environmental reporting. Furthermore, we were able to detect a communication focus around the themes of low carbon emissions and green/clean technology. In contrast, preservation of nature, clean air, or traditional owners of the land/cultural issues were only mentioned occasionally and occurred mainly as topics related to a specific region where the company operates (i.e., in Australia). For the research perspective presented here, the most important aspects are the frames, however. In the theory section of this article, frames were conceptualized as key elements in the creation of a narrative and as a key mechanism in niche construction through communication. As also mentioned above, issue-specific frames are used in strategic communication. What is equally important are the ‘master frames’ (Weder, 2021) that are created with a combination of issue-specific frames, which then represent the narrative – which, again, changed over time.

For the analysis, the inductive categorization led to the identification of 73 issue specific frames, summarized in 7 narratives in a second step of categorization (Mayring & Fenzl, 2019, Table 2).

Table 2. Frames & narratives of sustainability, analytical framework.

Issue specific frames (examples)	Master frame/narrative	Example/quote
Happy, bright future	Future orientation, 1a innovation 1b security	“Be a good corporate citizen”, “care for future generations”, with x energy fir a better life” (G, 2004)
Business innovation	2 Business orientation/management/stability	“Sustainability performance”, … is necessary to ensure sustainable economic growth, preserve prosperity, and combat poverty” (O, 2019)
Doing better than others	Competitor focus 3a economic advantage 3b notion of care	“Taking the lead in and profiting from, the transformation to a sustainable energy system across the value chain in northern Europe is a central part of X’s long-term strategy” (V, 2016)
Technological development, security	4 Technological innovations	“Necessary changes … can only be achieved through technological innovation” (D, 2019)
Corporate contribution to climate change action	5 Urgency (environmental/climate crisis)	“Climate change roadmap” (A, 2018)
Communities’ energy needs	6 Collaboration/partnerships	“Affected communities should have a say in our operations” (K, 2009)
Compliance with legal/regulatory expectations	7 Governance, regulations	“The necessary changes can only be made if governments, the public, and business work together” (O, 2019)

All seven narratives show a notion of stability and security, which will be further explored in the next section.

Development over time

Comparing the different energy companies is challenging. However, there are similarities in the strategic communication of, about and potentially for sustainability. The common ground is that over the years, there has been nearly no communication around the climate crisis. While climate change is mentioned, it is not understood through a notion of urgency, rather via the notion of security and stability. This notion of security and stability was far more articulated and created a core concept of sustainability. For our question of when and how the sustainability narrative emerged, we looked at frames and narratives over the 30 years of corporate reporting and how they changed over time and discovered changes, summarized in Table 3.

Table 3. Changes in framing over time.

Timeframe	Phase 1 (1990–2005	Phase 2 (2005–2011)	Phase 3 (2011-now)
	Environmental Responsibility (5)	People, planet & profit; business & management orientation (2, 1b)	Future orientation & innovation & opportunities (1a, 1b)
	Global warming & changing climate, urgency (1b, 5)	Collaboration, Public-private partnerships (6, 1b)	Progress, technological innovations, transformation (4, 1b)
	Future generations (5, 1b)	Competitor focus; doing better than others (3a)	Governance, regulation, system change (7, 1b)

In phase 1, the term ‘sustainability’ was not used very frequently, it rather appeared in combination with engagement and strategies that were developed and labelled as ‘sustainable engagement.’ In phase 2, the concept or representation of a ‘sustainable future’ was increasingly used to identify the goal of the reported efforts. This is vaguely represented around 2010, as showcased in the following statement: “Our key objective is to build a sustainable future for X, where we will continue to be successful and respected for the next 10, 20, or 50 years, by doing the right thing for our stakeholders. … ” (A, 2011).

After that, the reporting was clearly much more growth-focused, where “sustainable growth through future investments in electricity generation and upstream gas … provide economic benefit to both X and the community” (A, 2015).

From there, the aim is increasingly on building a breadth of experience and knowledge for business leaders for the future and integrating sustainability in the day-to-day business. The idea is to create a “strong and responsible environmental culture, with a high emphasis on environmental management on all levels of the company” (A, 2019), and to be a “leader in a net-zero world with sustainability at the heart of business strategies” (O, 2022).

One of the key-takeaways from the study is that sustainability has been used as a language token from the beginning of environmental reporting; however, the connotation and framing were different. Over the years, a much clearer narrative of sustainability as a principle of action, as a ‘character’ of action or ‘moral compass’ for corporate engagement of all kinds has evolved. With the principles of evolution at hand, we can look at the data and the developments that we detected in environmental, CSR and sustainability reporting over time from a new perspective and identify the patterns of the sustainability story – and which ones are selected and will potentially survive.

1. Variation:

The analyzed energy corporations and their reporting, here mainly the CEO messages, show a clear pattern of storytelling. There is a notion of human superiority over nature with a strong focus on the use management and investment of resources. This notion is reinforced by communication about the mutual effort of markets, science, and technological development as well as political institutions which lead to more sustainable production and consumption. This is the offspring of the narrative of ‘sustainable growth’ (Guske et al., 2019) or the ‘sunshine perspective’ (Weder et al., 2021). There are certain variations to that, mainly around how investment and innovation will support ‘sustained’ or ‘sustainable’ growth and give rise to new economic opportunities.

2. Inheritance and time:

There seems to be one pattern that is consistent and ‘passed on’ from one report to the next, which is the ‘security frame’. The story about sustainability enabling security (over time, into the future) is visible and consistent. Security and stability as notions of sustainability are used in framing in an economic dimension (creating collaborations, partnerships, doing better than competitors), but also in a governance dimension (institutionalizing and manifesting sustainability as a principle in new governance structures, regulatory frameworks, applied reporting standards and community engagement projects).

There is a legitimate question about the aspects of sustainability that have been selected and what the selection principles are. Here, evolutionary thinking helps to understand the development of strategic sustainability communication over time, where security as a frame (and therefore selection principle) became stronger and drove the evolution of the sustainability story in the analyzed reporting. By identifying frames as key communicative principles that drive the evolution of the sustainability story, it became obvious that the sustainability story is still a story of growth. The communicative elements around ‘growth critique’ (Berg & Hukkinen, 2011), or even post-growth and alternatives to the existing system (capitalism, Guske et al., 2019) are not detected in the corporate material analyzed. Instead, the notion of sustainability as ‘securing growth’ and ‘positive growth’, has been ‘normalized’ through years of corporate reporting. The study supports the assumption that sustainability and sustainable development are predominantly used as key terms in a narrative of growth, described as “eco-efficient growth” (Berg & Hukkinen, 2011), or used as linguistic devices representing the idea of “ecological modernization” following the existing market logic (Hajer, 1997), also explored in the areas of sustainable production and consumption, where sustainability is used as a shorthand for a new logic within the existing capitalistic economic system (Batel & Devine-Wright, 2015; Batel et al., 2016; Castro, 2015; Guske et al., 2019). Here corporates are not alone. The economic perspective on sustainability has also been popularized by key international organizations such as OECD, UNEP, and the World Bank, where sustainability is again used as shortened concept standing for new economic opportunities (OECD, 2011, p.91 cited in Jakob & Edenhofer, 2014). From a rather critical linguistic perspective, this has led to the situation that sustainability is a rather ‘western’ principle emphasized by global framing efforts (for example around the Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs) and is only rarely challenged by counter stories of abandonment or abstention as a solution for social and environmental problems or a post-growth narrative of a new culture of sufficiency (Guske et al., 2019; Soini & Dessein, 2016; Weder, 2022a).

Summary

The findings show that the ‘species’ of energy companies with their corporate non-financial reporting and sustainability communication as specific ‘niche’ of strategic communication developed further over the years – in a quantitative and qualitative dimension, from corporate to triple-bottom-line reporting to integrated forms of strategic communication and reporting more recently (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Development of corporate reporting, 1990–2020.

The passive role of organizations and dominant patterns of the old narrative, especially in earlier reports advanced to a more active, transformative- creative role (selection). Further, the reports increased in variety of different frames (variation) and responses to stakeholder expectations (adaptation). The narrative of awareness of a changing environment, of nature as incalculable and a complex opposite of humankind in the ‘90s, has given way to a narrative of responsibility in the years 2005–2015. The responsibility for (economic) growth by facing the struggle about ecological destruction and resource scarcity led to adaptation within organizations and the cultivation of new values within the organization (Weder, 2022a). In recent years, sustainability is increasingly used as a synonym for innovation, change and transition, with a notion of offering security looking into the future (co-construction of a new narrative of balance and harmony, the sustainability story).

Here, we could not only see a sense of agency and awareness for the new niche and the impact on the environment – and the potential to change cultural patterns beyond the organizations’ boundaries, which is key to sustainable transformation (Veland et al., 2018). Also, the frames of hope, security and the principle of growth show that sustainability (reporting) is no longer just a ‘trend’ or ‘fashion’ (Zorn & Collins, 2007) but had an impact on the species’ environment. At least western human communities have adapted their normative set of values and thus ‘religion’ in accordance with environmental requirements. This is expressed through organizations as agents and especially businesses as communicators. Players started to utilize this adaptation process not only for securing their existence and future but also for their own advantage. Further research on the evolution of the sustainability story should consider if sustainability can be even described as ‘new religion’ and explore the role of organizational communication and public relations in rendering it into a “sacred cow” (Sumner, 2005, p. 77). Sustainability has been introduced at the beginning of the article as common set of values which are immune to deep questioning or criticism. While religious ideas formed very early articulations of sustainability, more important is that individuals, groups, political institutions and organizations of all kinds are utilizing values that many people would refer to as ‘religious’. Today, the sustainability story works as ‘social glue’ by “promoting sets of shared languages and values, and focuses collective desires”, such as prosperity, security and meaning, “and is deployed to support existing hegemonic powers or to subvert them” (Johnston, 2014, p. 48). The study at hand supports Johnston’s assumption that stories about what constitutes the ‘good life’ are becoming increasingly popular in a way that the sustainability discourse comprises a narrative that points toward this specific set of transcendent norms (ibid., 61). With the analysis of environmental, CSR and sustainability reports as forms of strategic sustainability communication, we can trace back a niche construction through continuous strategic communication of and for sustainability, and thus a cultural evolution of explicit renderings of core values and deep beliefs in the public sphere.

Discussion

Theoretical approaches and conceptual applications of cultural evolution theory and niche construction theory suggest that the process of governed niche construction requires a look at organizations and how an issue is framed and potentially reframed so that “a potential new construct (new beliefs and new ideas) emerge” (Luksha, 2008, p. 275). It also includes strategic communication endeavors to communicatively link this narrative with the organization’s environment to spread the message. Lastly, there will be adaptation processes where the framing (and related action) is modified. It is important that even if new beliefs, ideas, or new framings are required to create opportunities, a certain belief does not necessarily need to be new. But the creation of opportunities always begins with a particular framing of issues (McAdam et al., 1996; Snow & Benford, 1992). Framing always happens in engagement processes of an organization with its stakeholder or constituents (Rindova & Fombrun, 1999). Strategic communication can shift boundaries and induce transformation beyond organizational boundaries. Change of the environment is at the core of strategic communication (Luksha, 2008). The niche construction approach shows that sustainability reporting does not only affect the organization itself. More importantly, it has the potential to change the rules of the game and change resources, values and norms in the organizational environment that then have again effects on the strategies of the organization and its constituents. To explore changes within organizations and communicative cultivation processes, further research is needed including interviews with members of the corporates of the sample. Also, participatory formats like observations and focus group discussions are recommended to reconstruct change within organizations over time – in relation to changes in the species’ environment.

However, the article and the analysis at hand helped to better understand the emergence and manifestation of a new value and principle of action (sustainability) through strategic communication. The focus on framing as a mode of communication shows not only the potential to actively participate in cultural evolution processes by (re)producing new societal values. It links strategic communication to the human mind (man as storytelling animal, Mitchell, 2006) and how it works (Nothhaft, 2016, p. 80). This article fits in a new research program for strategic communication by integrating knowledge from social psychology, sociology, linguistics, and communication science. It expands existing thinking about how (much) strategic communication has been ‘successful’ in establishing sustainability as a story of a secure, positive future. A story of growth not only as a niche but also as a new culture of communication with and for the organizational environment.

The findings of the content analysis of 30 years of corporate reporting in the energy sector support the assumption about the potential of strategic communication in transforming the grand stories of our society. Cultural differences, or at least variations, function as a carrier of ideology and meaning and ‘trigger’ further sense- and meaning-making on an individual level (Seiffert-Brockmann, 2018), again considering cultural constraints in social change and development processes (Servaes, 2016).

The limitations of the study are the small number of analyzed content units, at least for a long-term comparison, and the specific industry sector of the companies included in our sample. Also, the predominantly qualitative character of the analysis makes the results hard to generalize. However, we can see dominant patterns of the new narrative of growth that survived as the fittest, that is selected as the strongest narrative, compared to the old, rather negative, loss-focused and thus destructive climate change narrative. There seems to be more potential for variations, for alternative framing of corporate action for sustainability, and for a transition to a sustainable future. As well, we see future incitement to dig deeper into approaches to evolutionary thinking in literature studies and writing as well as philosophy (i.e., Nowak & Komarova, 2001; Sugiyama, 2001). The official requirements and legislative frameworks for sustainability communication (like the GRI, 2022) seem to be a barrier to creative authorship of a new sustainability story and thus a barrier for further evolution of the story. To change the construction of the world and to create new possibilities for action (Hendersson & Wamsler, 2019) is where we see the potential of strategic communication in the future.

With our contribution, we not only aim to stimulate further studies analyzing evolution as core process of strategic framing and storytelling approaches. More importantly, analyzing sustainability communication and the role of strategic communication for the transition from an old to a new narrative of the future, shows that strategic communication is also a consequence of evolution (Greenwood, 2010) like the convergence of public relations and organizational communication.

Outlook

In his influential article about why it matters how we talk about the environment, Lakoff (2010, p. 72) creates the connection of stories, narratives and how they are told – a key issue in evolutionary psychology. Lakoff describes our way of reasoning as partly a conscious process, but also an unconscious process, based on emotions, neural circuits, and using the ‘logic’ that stories and metaphors trigger for us. These stories are produced and reproduced within certain parts of our mind, which then influences habits of feeling, thinking and acting. New bits of information or triggers of other kind need to fit with these habits. Otherwise, cognitive dissonances appear, and the information is potentially suppressed (Weder et al., 2019) – a process which can also be looked at under the principle of selection (and adaptation).

Social change starts with the stories we tell, and the stories people live by. Sensemaking and the emergence of new values and norms is defined as “behavior, both internal (cognitive) and external (procedural) which allows the individual to construct and design his/her movement through time-space” (Benzon, 1993; Dervin, 1983, p. 3). Knowing that today’s behaviors have evolved as solutions to yesterday’s problems, I agree with Seiffert-Brockmann (2018) and Nothhaft (2016) in that it is important to further study the origins of psychological behavioral adaptations in humans (Confer et al., 2010) and acknowledge the consequences of evolutionary thinking for future research in strategic communication. Strategic communication research should go beyond questions around what is communicated (as done in the article at hand) and move forward into the area of why and with what effects and consequences is the sustainability story told - and what behavior will be reciprocated and why. Here, e.g., frame effect studies (Cacciatore et al., 2016 et al.) can be worth further exploration.

However, the study at hand shows that stories are actively constructed and adjusted by people with power, with certain goals. Predominantly NGOs, governments and corporates have certain change purposes in their storytelling of and related to sustainability. Thus, future research also needs to focus on , e.g., questions of power; thinking about concepts of ‘power over’, reification (Haugaard, 2002, 2018) or how sustainability is potentially used in age-old power relationships (hegemonic framing of sustainability from a corporate, capitalistic lens as ‘securing the future’, ‘securing growth’) and how it can be transformed in a ‘power with’ (concerted power) concept. What role storytelling and a diversification of sustainability narratives towards a notion of care play in that regard will be one of the key questions that strategic communication research needs to tackle in the future.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).