Exploring Organisational Discursive Construction of Environmental Sustainability - A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Environmental Discourse Within a Swedish Trade Union

Abstract

How organisations talk about the environment shapes how it is understood, and how it in practice becomes manageable and actionable. Discourses shape what becomes treated as urgent and what becomes set aside, which affects organisational priorities and outcomes. Despite growing attention to sustainability communication, how sustainability is framed within internal organisational discourse remains underexplored, particularly within trade union contexts. This study critically examines how environmental aspects of sustainability are discursively constructed within a Swedish trade union internally. Drawing on a critical discourse analysis and an ecolinguistic approach, 25 semi-structured interviews were conducted across multiple organisational levels and office locations. Four key discursive themes were identified: The Environment as a Quantifiable and Manageable Process, as an Organisational Identity, as a Distributed Responsibility, and as Competing Organisational Priorities. Together, these key discursive themes reveal an overall ambivalent environmental discourse in which environmental issues are largely erased. A central finding is that embedding environmental work into organisational identity does not strengthen ecological reflexivity, instead it structurally constrains it. While the environment is discursively constructed as part of the organisational “DNA”, no one ultimately assumes full environmental responsibility in practice. These findings have implications for managers and organisations seeking to move beyond performative sustainability talk towards genuine ecological commitment, showing that how an organisation discursively integrates environmental work carries consequences for both organisational practice and ecological outcomes.