Susanne Arvidsson
Associate professor, Centre Director
CEOs’ talk of sustainability: Towards an inclusion of an embeddedness and value-creation perspective
Author
Summary, in English
Purpose: This paper sets out to examine how CEOs’ talk of sustainability has developed in a period of increased expectations from society for companies to step up their transformation towards more sustainable businesses andbetter account for their progress and performance within the sustainability area.
Design/methodology/approach: By adopting an interpretive textual approach, this paper provides a careful analysis of how CEO talk of sustainability has developed in the largest listed Swedish companies during the period 2008-2017. The analysis focuses on the CEO letter.
Findings: TheCEOs’ talk of sustainability is becoming much more elaborated, proactive and also adopts a multi-dimensional approach towards sustainability. The CEOs frame their talk by adopting different perspectives over the period; the sticky environmental-, the performance and meso-, the product-market oriented-and the embeddedness and value-creation perspective.The most intriguing finding is that of a radical change in the CEOs’ talk of sustainability in the latest lettersindicating that the alleged capitalistic and short-sighted focus on value maximization and profitability might be changing for embedding more of sustainability dimensions.
Practical implications: The findings provide relevant inputs to the debate on how CEOs provide accountability to their stakeholders by framing their talk of sustainability from different perspectives.
Originality/value:This comprehensive analysis of how CEOs in the largest listed companies through their talk of sustainability provide accountability to their stakeholders, offers a unique frame of reference for further interpretational work on how CEOs frame, engage in andshape the sustainability discourse.
Design/methodology/approach: By adopting an interpretive textual approach, this paper provides a careful analysis of how CEO talk of sustainability has developed in the largest listed Swedish companies during the period 2008-2017. The analysis focuses on the CEO letter.
Findings: TheCEOs’ talk of sustainability is becoming much more elaborated, proactive and also adopts a multi-dimensional approach towards sustainability. The CEOs frame their talk by adopting different perspectives over the period; the sticky environmental-, the performance and meso-, the product-market oriented-and the embeddedness and value-creation perspective.The most intriguing finding is that of a radical change in the CEOs’ talk of sustainability in the latest lettersindicating that the alleged capitalistic and short-sighted focus on value maximization and profitability might be changing for embedding more of sustainability dimensions.
Practical implications: The findings provide relevant inputs to the debate on how CEOs provide accountability to their stakeholders by framing their talk of sustainability from different perspectives.
Originality/value:This comprehensive analysis of how CEOs in the largest listed companies through their talk of sustainability provide accountability to their stakeholders, offers a unique frame of reference for further interpretational work on how CEOs frame, engage in andshape the sustainability discourse.
Department/s
- Accounting and Corporate Finance
Publishing year
2019-12
Language
English
Publication/Series
LSR Working Papers Series
Issue
2019:02
Links
Document type
Working paper
Topic
- Economics and Business
Keywords
- CEO talk
- Sustainability
- CEO letters
- Accountability
- Organisational (managerial) attention
- Corporate response
- Q01
- M14
- M41
Status
Published
Project
- Sustainable Future Hub