Organizational communication and sustainability, studying European public campaigns

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to identify and reflect about the communicative processes adopted for the communication of Sustainability by European public organizations. The instrumental character that Organizational Communication usually presents is no longer sufficient to explain the several communication processes and their consequences in the organizational environment, especially when the subject to be communicated is Sustainability. More than just a management tool, Organizational Communication is a constituent element of organizations, by which we analyze the production and reproduction of the meanings, developed by continuous interaction between individuals. There are a few models used for the communication analysis, but here we highlight the PARC (Politically Attentive Relational Construction) elaborated by Deetz (2009). Through it we intend to analyze the sustainability campaigns of four European public organizations that constitute the case study of this article. We do not intend to analyze the efficiency of production, transmission and reception of messages. Our intention is to establish the concepts of production adopted and the inclusion levels of stakeholders in the process of communicative interaction. In general, the results indicate that there are other ways of communicating sustainability beyond the strategic perspective.