Table Of ContentCSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance
Series Editors: Samuel O. Idowu · René Schmidpeter
Myria Allen
Strategic
Communication
for Sustainable
Organizations
Theory and Practice
CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance
SeriesEditors
SamuelO.Idowu,LondonMetropolitanUniversity,London,UnitedKingdom
Rene´ Schmidpeter,CologneBusinessSchool,Germany
More information about this series at
http://www.springer.com/series/11565
Myria Allen
Strategic Communication for
Sustainable Organizations
Theory and Practice
MyriaAllen
DepartmentofCommunication
UniversityofArkansas
Fayetteville,AR
USA
ISSN2196-7075 ISSN2196-7083 (electronic)
CSR,Sustainability,Ethics&Governance
ISBN978-3-319-18004-5 ISBN978-3-319-18005-2 (eBook)
DOI10.1007/978-3-319-18005-2
LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2015938585
SpringerChamHeidelbergNewYorkDordrechtLondon
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To my grandson, Adjani, and all children
everywhere. May the adults in your life
embark quickly and boldly to ensure a more
resilient and sustainable planet.
ThiSisaFMBlankPage
Foreword
TheBrundtlandCommission(1987)oftheWorldCommissiononEnvironmentand
Development—an arm of the United Nations—was asked to formulate a “global
agenda for change.” In our own view, we believe that this change has since the
reportcameoutcontinuedtoshowitsfacegloballyinallareasofhumanexistence.
The report has successfully brought to our consciousness a number of issues on
sustainabledevelopmentandtheconsequencesofpersistentirresponsibilityonthe
partofglobalcorporateandindividualcitizens.Needlesstosay,nearly30yearson,
alothashappenedinourworldwithregardto—OurCommonFuture.Forinstance,
aseriesofUNConferencesontheEnvironmenthaveseenthelightoftheday.The
Eight Millennium Development Goals had been set; with a few months to its end
period, a number of versions of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) have been
issued; the G4 being its latest version, the ISO 26000 is now in place; similarly
researchstudies,scholarlyconferences,debates,workshops,andamassiveincrease
inthenumberadditionstotheliteratureonsustainabilityareallnowpartofourlife;
these are a few examples of what this change has brought to us. Myria Allen’s
Strategic Communication for Sustainable Organizations: Theory and Practice is
thelatestadditiontotheliteratureonsustainabilityandsustainabledevelopment.
Allen’squesttowantingtounderstandhowsustainabilityinitiativeswerebeing
enacted acrosstheUSAwasthemotivationforthisbook.Armedwiththeknowl-
edge of the theories of different aspects of the field having taught Organizational
Communication since the emergence of the Brundtland Report in 1987 and Envi-
ronmentalCommunicationmorerecentlyandbeinginvolvedindifferentfacetsof
sustainabilityinacademia,shewasdeterminedtoaddtoreaders’practicalknowl-
edgeofhowsustainabilityhascontinuedtoevolveintheUSA.Allenembarkedon
afewmonths’SustainablejourneyacrosstheUnitedStatesofAmerica—thisbook
isanaccountofwhatshesaw!
Havingspentsometimereadingsomesectionsofthebookandbearinginmind
that our world is facing a series of environmental-related challenges including
Global Warming, scarcity of many of our resources, etc., every citizen of the
world both corporate and individual would have to learn to innovate in order to
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viii Foreword
usesustainablyallourdepletableandevennondepletableresourcesandalsolearn
to process sustainably all our ever increasingwastes. Our failure to do this would
makelifeunbearableforboththisgenerationandfuturegenerationsofresidentsof
planetEarth,afterallthisisallaboutourcommonfuture.
WewishtotakethisopportunitytocongratulateMyriaAllenforthisinvaluable
additiontobooksonsustainabilityandsustainabledevelopment.Wearedelighted
torecommendthebookunreservedlytoallreadersworldwidebothinacademiaand
inpractice.Inaddition,thebookisavaluableresourcewhichallundergraduateand
graduate students of Corporate Social Responsibility CSR must have; remember,
ourcommonfutureisinvolved!
London,UK SamuelO.Idowu
Cologne,Germany ReneSchmidpeter
Preface
Why Write This Book?
Whenhewasalmost60,JohnSteinbeckspent3monthstravelingthroughAmerica
with his standard poodle, Charlie. In Travels with Charley: In Search of America
(1962) Steinbeck writes about setting out to rediscover his native land. He
described himself as an American writer who had been writing from memory
sincehehadnottraveledextensivelyinhishomecountryfor25years.Hewrote:
IhadnotheardthespeechofAmerica,smelledthegrassandtreesandsewage,seenitshills
and water, its color and quality of light. I knew the changes only from books and
newspapers. In short, I was writing of something I did not know about,and it seems to
methatinaso-calledwriterthisiscriminal(p.5).
AsIapproached60,inthesummerof2013,IjourneyedWestwithmyhusband,
A.J., and our standard poodle, Hector, in search of America. I wanted to see how
sustainability initiatives were being played out in a variety of organizations. For
almost 2.5 decades, I’ve taught about organizational communication and, more
recently, environmental communication. I know the theories. I’ve taught future
scholarsandpractitioners,conductedresearch,publishedscholarlyarticles,served
onUniversitycommitteesaddressingsustainability-focusedresearchandcurricular
design, andbuiltasmalleco-efficientEnergy Starcertifiedhome.Ilivedown the
road from the Sustainability Consortium, a group Scientific American magazine
identified as among the top 10 World Changing Ideas of 2012. This consortium
includesbusinesses,universities, andnonprofitorganizations thattogetherseekto
developscience-basedtoolstoadvancethemeasurementandreportingofconsumer
product sustainability. You will learn more about them later. So, I’m aware of
multiplesustainability-focusedinitiativesoccurringinmyownbackyard.
ButIdidn’tknowwhatwasgoingoninLincoln,NE,Pierre,SD,Missoula,MT,
Boardman, WA, Portland, OR, Boulder, CO, and other parts far distant from my
home in Fayetteville, AR. I hadn’t recently driven past wind farms, or toured
hydroelectric plants, seen the building of pipelines to transport oil from the
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