"Vi vill vara ett hållbart företag i ett hållbart samhälle." : En kvalitativ studie i hur klimatbelastande företag konstruerar hållbarhet.

Sammanfattning: ”We want to be a sustainable company in a sustainable society.” A qualitative study of how climate comprimising companies construct sustainability. The aim of this study is to examine how companies in a climate compromising industry construct the concept of sustainability within its external communication. The study intends to gain a deeper understanding for sustainability as a concept and its ambiguity, as well as how a company can use sustainability communication to minimize the gap between its climate compromising business idea and sustainability. Taking a social constructionist perspective, the study focuses on how the language can construct the concept of sustainability, in this case by using a discourse analysis. The leading theory in this study is therefore discourse theory, as well as the theory of weak and strong sustainability discourse which can be described as a dichotomy. The analysis indicates that there are discourses that can be distinguished in the construction of sustainability and that there is an internal competition between these discourses. Furthermore, the main conclusion states that the prominent discourse within sustainability communication is the weak discourse and by using weak sustainability discourse, a company is able to minimize the gap between their business idea and their sustainability. The study’s result is in line with previous research which states that the weak sustainability discourse seems to be the prominent discourse for business actors. Keywords: Sustainability communication, sustainability, discourse analysis, discourse theory, weak sustainability, strong sustainability, climate compromising Number of characters including spaces: 102 434