Industry Representation of Sustainable Production and Itts Influence on Stakeholder Understanding and Response to Sustainable Production Cues: A Reflectionist-Representation Perspective

Abstract

Work on sustainable production has for years been limited to the geographical, biological and chemical sciences. This thesis proposal presents a plan to broaden and expand the current scope of this discipline, beyond these realms of knowledge, into the interdisciplinary fields of business, marketing, management, corporate communications and organization studies. This objective is achieved through a review of academic literature on sustainable production leading to the development of a research problem, which is consolidated into one overarching research question illustrated as how do firms represent sustainable production and how do such representations influence stakeholders’ understanding and response to sustainable production cues? This question inspired the introduction and development of a conceptual framework which for now is called ‘The Reflectionist-Representation Model of Sustainable Production’. This model, grounded on Stuart Hall’s reflectionist theory of representation, attempts to address the illustrated research question conceptually by offering a detailed analysis of the processes by which the representation of sustainable production in corporate communication texts influences stakeholders’ understanding and response to sustainable production. Beyond the introduction of sustainable production into the business domain, this model is unique because it introduces the reflectionist theory of cultural representation, which is originally a media and cultural study phenomenon, into the nascent field of sustainability.