Browsing by Subject "IFIs"

This study examines how corporate sustainability discourses are constructed and utilized for building corporate legitimacy during global crises by the Nordic international financial institutions (Nordic Finance Group) through the conceptual lens of strategic corporate sustainability communication and discursive legitimacy theory and held up against the scrutiny of critical discourse analysis. In the analysis, two overarching ways to talk about corporate sustainability were found: Integrative and Instrumental. In practice, instead of more integrated understanding(s) of corporate sustainability, the Nordic IFIs seem to construct most of their argumentative legitimacy schemes on interdiscursive framings of corporate sustainability. Furthermore, the critical discourse analysis revealed that this legitimacy is signalled through ‘Purpose’, ‘Responsibility’, ‘Conformity’, and ‘Capability’ corporate sustainability discourses, respectively. Importantly, by mimicking the crisis specific topical discursive patterns, the Nordic IFIs attempt to seize the communicative opportunities to convey legitimacy narratives and mitigate the risks the sudden societal disturbances might create. The sustainability discourses utilized by the Nordic IFIs seem to advocate neoliberal ideology and global capitalism by building a narrative of action and utility around ´sustainable finance´. The analysis reveals that the Nordic IFIs rely on various co-existing discursive legitimation strategies during crises. The analysis identifies the use of four distinctive discursive legitimation strategies, namely, authorization, rationalization, narrativization and moralization. This study also argues that the concepts of ‘corporate sustainability’ and ‘sustainable finance’ can be seen as discursive legitimation tools. Furthermore, strategic corporate sustainability communication should be seen as a proactive corporate strategy and strategic practice to seek legitimacy.