Faculty Publications

From Product To Process: The Rhetoric Of Sustainability And Evolving Management Practice

Document Type

Article

Keywords

complex adaptive systems, corporate social responsibility, rhetoric, sustainability

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Business and Professional Communication Quarterly

Volume

84

Issue

3

First Page

242

Last Page

265

Abstract

Business adopted a terminology of sustainability to defend, then justify, and finally explain practices that acknowledged resource limitations as inherent in the business environment. Tracing the rhetoric across a half century of business use demonstrates an expansion of the concept of sustainability to encompass managerial attention to finite human, capital, and political resources. A rhetoric of sustainability seemed to promise a revolution in management practice, and practitioners have indeed adopted principles of complex systems. The sustainability terminology retains its narrower focus on environmentally responsible corporate activities, however, and management communication pedagogy has not yet recognized the emerging discourse of adaptive communication practices.

Department

Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship

Original Publication Date

9-1-2021

DOI of published version

10.1177/2329490620987835

Repository

UNI ScholarWorks, Rod Library, University of Northern Iowa

Language

en

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