Formative conversations as foundation for strategic sustainability communication : Reflexive investigations of a neglected feature

Sustainability communication confronts some of society’s most pressing and complex challenges. This thesis advances the field by highlighting complexity as a defining characteristic of strategic sustainability communication, a perspective that has been largely neglected. It challenges the dominant organization-centric approach that frames communication as an instrument for achieving corporate goals, and instead emphasizes a formative understanding that recognizes communication as constitutive of sustainability strategies and practices. Drawing on complexity theory and paradox theory, the thesis explores how organizations engaged in a global investment initiative to combat climate change perceive and respond to the external and internal complexities of sustainability issues. Through a reflexive methodological approach, it analyzes interviews and six years of initiative reports to understand how communicative processes are shaped by “wicked problems” and organizational tensions between sustainability and financial goals. The results show that conceptual ambiguity, stakeholder diversity, non-linear development and organizational paradoxes challenge dominant strategic communication models. Instead, the study argues for a shift towards more interactive, adaptive and meaningful communication methods. By identifying and empirically applying key complexity concepts, the thesis contributes to theory development in sustainability communication and provides rare insights into investor organizations as central but understudied sustainability communicators. It advocates a reorientation of stakeholder logic, from organizational control to societal engagement and questioning, to meet the grand challenges of our time.