Narrative fidelity: making the UN Sustainable Development Goals fit
Corporate Communications: An International Journal
ISSN: 1356-3289
Article publication date: 6 October 2020
Issue publication date: 23 June 2021
Abstract
Purpose
This paper empirically examines how firms have discursively adopted the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). More precisely, it studies firms' ability to constitute their organizational identity by way of associating their past, present, and future practices with the newly established Goals. By focussing on the temporal dynamics of change, this paper provides analytical clarity on the role “narrative fidelity”.
Design/methodology/approach
The author collected all online available SDG-related communications, including financial and non-financial reports, of 29 large French multinationals throughout 2016 and 2017. These data were analysed using a systematic narrative approach incorporating open-ended coding cycles.
Findings
Four narratives were distilled: the descriptive narrative, which promotes general knowledge; the past narrative, which reinterprets the organizational past by retelling and reviewing actions; the present narrative, which associates prevailing organizational strategies with new categories; and the future narrative, which articulates and prioritizes new ambitions.
Originality/value
Current performativity theories in Corporate Social Responsibility scholarship focus solely on future narratives, such as “aspirational talk”, and fail to incorporate how revising and redefining past and present stories creates an imperative “fit” between an organization's identity and a new framework. This study goes beyond future narratives and contributes to our understanding of the dynamic nature of temporal narratives (past – present – future). By building on narrative fidelity, it shows how all four narratives are crucial, sequential steps that help build a new corporate identity.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Funding: This paper has benefited funding from Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).The author would like to thank Marc Robin, then working at the UN Global Compact and at the World Benchmarking Alliance, for providing critical insights into the SDG business context and giving access to key industry events. Feedback provided both at “ETHOS” held at Cass Business School on 12 December 2019 and “CSR Communication” held at Stockholm School of Economics on 18–20 September 2019 was instructive in shaping the article's theoretical contributions. Finally, the author thanks Dennis Schoeneborn and Robyn Klingler-Vidra for their constructive suggestions on an earlier version.
Citation
van den Broek, O. (2021), "Narrative fidelity: making the UN Sustainable Development Goals fit", Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 26 No. 3, pp. 441-460. https://doi.org/10.1108/CCIJ-01-2020-0032
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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