How Best to Communicate a Firm’s Sustainability/Corporate Responsibility: Integrating Management and Communications Theory to Determine Effective Corporate Reputations Outcomes Lisa Koep School of Marketing Professor Aidan O’Driscoll

Introduction Currently research project is in the the early developmental stage Research takes place in the food and retailing sector Industry partner in this project is Bord Bia 2

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Why Sustainability Communication? 4 Sustainability Innovation & Adaption Helps to achieve more efficient use of resources Takes primarily place in disciplines such as engineering, built environment, science Sustainability Communication Ensures a wide range of stakeholders become involved in a dialogue surrounding sustainable consumption and production Provides incentive more companies to become involved in sustainability due to improved reputational advantage

Dilemma: to tell or not to tell? 5 Intensity of Communication Adoption of Sustainability Low High Low Illy CafeM&S RyanairAIB

Objectives of Research To examine how firms should communicate their sustainability/corporate responsibility claims most effectively: – How? – To what extent? – To whom? 6

Why Is It Important? Currently scholarly and practitioner knowledge offer limited insight into this dilemma Sustainability communication impacts on corporate reputation and thus economic performance Sustainability communication can also impact on the broad project of sustainability 7

Why Sustainability/Corporate Responsibility (CR)? 8 Triple Bottom Line (profitable, societal responsibility, respect ecological consideration) Sustainability: focuses on issues such as global warming, resource depletion & green opportunities Corporate Responsibility: concentrates on issues such as business ethics & corporate reputation

How Will It Be Carried Out? To address the research question, two streams of literature on sustainability will be connected – Management of sustainability – Evolution – Organisation – Delivery – Communications of these activities 9

How Will It Be Carried Out? 10

How Will It Be Carried Out? 11

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Methodology 13 Case studies/interviews  parsimonious model Comprehensive survey to further develop and validate model Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to analyse data test hypotheses

Contribution Research output will provide a model to comprehend the interconnections between organising/managing sustainability/CR and the communication to stakeholders Managerially: research will provide valuable insights into into how firms can effectively communicate sustainability/CR depending on their level of embrace 14

Contribution Academically: the research question will be answered by linking to streams of sustainability/CR literature: 1.Sustainability/CR Management 2.Sustainability/CR Communication To date there have been limited attempts to explore the relationships between management and communication of sustainability and a gap in existing research has been identified 15

16 Questions? Comments?