Corporate Sustainability Communications: Aspects of Theory and Professionalization

Sustainable development, as defined in the Brundtland Report (Brundtland Commission, 1987 Brundtland Commission. 1987. “Our Common Future”. In The Brundtland Report, Oxford, , UK: World Council on Sustainable Development. [Google Scholar]), aims to meet the needs of both current and future generations. On the company level, implementing sustainability should guarantee long-term success and requires not only support of top management, but also networking of several other corporate systems. The aim of this article is to frame the role of communications in corporate sustainability processes. The authors notice that companies engage in communications about sustainability issues for marketing, business, and/or societal reasons. In addition to that, linkages between recent theoretical approaches to public relations and the concept of corporate sustainability communications are being established. Professionalization is recognized as important to secure the evolving field of action for public relations practitioners.