The marketing and public affairs of sustainability

• Published date: 01 August 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1854
• Date: 01 August 2018

EDITORIAL

The marketing and public affairs of sustainability

In 2006, the Journal of Public Affairs published the special issue “CSR

and Public Affairs,”edited by Paul Baines and Phil Harris (Volume 6,

Issue 3–4). The editors write: “We continue to see large growth in

the amount of academic works in the field and widespread public

recognition of the concept, if not agreement on its importance. (…)

What CSR actually means depends very much on the business envi-

ronment, i.e. political, market, cultural and legal.”(Baines & Harris,

2006, p. 171). The special issue attracted some well‐known early

authors, and contributions went from theoretical and conceptual

efforts to define corporate social responsibility (CSR)/corporate sus-

tainability (CS) and guidance towards a responsible business deci-

sion‐making framework to more empirical studies of stakeholder

(management) challenges and supply chain issues and policies—mostly

illustrated along apparent CSR and sustainability vanguards. Arguably,

the dawn of this millennium was the start for public, private, and also

academic actors and coalitions of interest in order to influence the

rhetoric and reality of the “modern”CSR and sustainability sphere,

including discursive dynamics about prioritising CSR and CS as

organisational aims.

With interest and enthusiasm, we have seen an ever growing and

diversifying academic and practical interest in the concepts and man-

agement of CSR and CS, seemingly giving ongoing support to Lockett,

Moon, and Visser's (2006) early claim of “CSR being in a continuing

state of emergence.”Energy has gone into investigating and develop-

ing strategies, tools, business cases for sustainability, and related con-

cepts. Although today, sustainability can be considered a management

practice with in parts codified understandings, a “one solution fits all”

approach is questionable (Breitbarth, Walzel, Anagnostopoulos, & van

Eekeren, 2015; Schaltegger & Burritt, 2018; Schaltegger, Hörisch, &

Freeman, 2017). The variety of perspectives reflects the plurality of

awareness, ambition, and development levels of different industries,

organisations, and stakeholders represent. In this context, companies

are still challenged to develop their CS‐/CSR‐related management

activities in the light of competing stakeholder interpretations and to

secure legitimacy and successful business operations.

This special issue of Journal of Public Affairs focuses on the con-

struction and manifestation of CS and CSR as a persuasive and con-

vincing (or distracting) and effective (or opportunistic) organisational

management idea and operation. It combines historical‐, contextual‐,

processual‐, and communication‐oriented work across the fields of

marketing and branding, reputation and stakeholder management,

public affairs and lobbying, organisational management, and communi-

cation. Combined, it leads to a better understanding and

conceptualisation of how in a pluralistic stakeholder environment

interested actors from within and outside organisations as well as

relevant business‐and‐society issues have impacted on the accep-

tance, design, and application of CS and CSR.

1|SPECIAL ISSUE PAPERS

Special issue guest editors T im Breitbarth, Stefan Schaltegger, and John

Mahon start this special issue with a retrospect of the construction of

the “business case”for CSR and corporate sustainability in the paper

“The business case for sustainability in retrospect: A Scandinavian institu-

tionalism perspective on the role of expert conferences in shaping the

emerging ‘CSR and corporate sustainability space’.”In particular, this

paper is concerned with the rise and, in hindsight, successful “position-

ing”of CSR and corporate sustainability as a management idea. It

embraces a narrative‐driven and dynamic perspective to frame the

analysis of the discourse, rhetoric and arguments‐in‐use during the

emergence of “modern CSR”in Europe in the early 2000s. On

the one hand, it shows that the European Union/Commission acted

as an “enabler”of business case rhetoric. On the other hand,

empirical evidence from two expert conferences series in Germany

2004–2008 leads to the conclusion that a wide coalition of interested

parties continuously and progressively filled, shaped, and energised

the early “CSR and corporate sustainability space”with presenting

the concepts as a rationale and progressive (management) idea.

In the second paper, Matthias Fifka, Anna‐Lena Kühn, and Markus

Stiglbauer examine CSR mission statements and test their substance

and relation to other firm‐, industry‐, and country‐specific variables.

“‘One size fits all’? Convergence in international Corporate Social Respon-

sibility communication—A comparative study of CSR mission statements

in the U.S. and India”is framed by institutional theory, with a focus

on the relevance of organisational communication. On a comparative

level, the authors explain the cross‐country conformity of CSR com-

munication by a convergence towards global and universal CSR com-

munication approaches. Hence, Fifka, Kühn, and Stiglbauer also give

substance to the general observation that communication is a core

aspect of driving corporate sustainability on the one hand and the

increasing global acceptance of CSR/CR as management idea.

The following contribution “Benchmarking sustainability perfor-

mance: the next step in building sustainable business models”from Elliot

Maltz, Henry H. Bi, and Mark Bateman build on the assumption that

developing sustainable business models incorporating effects on

DOI: 10.1002/pa.1854

J Public Affairs. 2018;18:e1854.

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1854

© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of3