Climate change as brand

Frandsen, Finn, and Winni Johansen. 2011. “Rhetoric, Climate Change, and Corporate Identity Management.” Management Communication Quarterly, 25 (3): 511-530.

Danish communication researchers Finn Fransen and Winni Johansen dive into the rhetoric of corporate identity management as it relates to global climate change and the environment. They use a case study that follows U.S. and Scandinavian automobile makers. They focus on the rhetorical aspects of corporate identity management as practiced by companies that are adhering to a new “institutional superstandard.” They work with Kjell Arne Revøk’s theory of the institutional process as organizational identity management, which argues that organizations are more likely to adopt new institutionalized rules when they experience their identity as being challenged or problematic. They also are inspired by the work of W. H. Scott and his three pillars of institutions—a regulative model that was popular in the 1970s, a narrative model that replaced the regulative component in the 1980s, and a cultural-cognitive model that is popular today (512, 517).

In regards to branding, Frandsen and Johansen discuss new approaches to commercialized green discourses that join with rhetoric framed by nature, the environment, or the greenness of organizations. They also note the changes in corporate environmentalist identity, with a shift in meaning from green to blue. Green branding mostly serves as a marketing function and blue branding takes a corporate communication path that includes corporate branding, corporate social responsibility, and human resources (514).

Frandsen and Johansen explain that climate change branding can be described as a group of ideas integrated into a complex process of institutionalization, wherein companies get involved in action-producing initiatives like developing climate strategies, designing climate-friendly products or production processes, and new, ecology-minded forms of internal and external communication. Interestingly, Frandsen and Johansen note that early neoinstitutional scholars in America tended to view organizations as passive receivers, but their Scandinavian counterparts saw them as active collective actors who defined communication, including its processes. With neoinstitutional theory, organizations adopt new institutionalized rules that gain legitimacy from their institutional context. However, the type of legitimacy they gain depends on the stakeholder group. (516, 519, 523).

As Frandsen and Johansen analyzed the corporate identity management of the automobile makers, they learned that the idea of climate change was not mentioned in “identity-bound” texts on any of these companies’ websites. Such texts would include mission and vision statements, lists of corporate values, and historical timelines. However, there were texts that fused responsibility with competitiveness. Also, there was a “logic of responsibility” in the texts, with an integration of the ideas of growth and reduction of consumption (524-526).

In closing, the researchers said they found that the institutionalization of climate change has begun in the automobile industry, but it has a long way to go. Within this process, a new vocabulary is emerging. The car companies are developing new texts to underscore ideas related to environmental stewardship and responsible growth. However, it is still too early to say what these emerging rhetorical constructions will convey, and how companies will adapt to become the environmentally-friendly business model their brands exemplify (527-528).