IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/humman/v6y2021i1d10.1007_s41463-019-00072-8.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Persuasions by Corporate and Activist NGO Strategic Website Communications: Impacts on Perceptions of Sustainability Messages and Greenwashing

Author

Listed:
  • Ronald J. Ferguson

    (Concordia University)

  • Kaspar Schattke

    (Université du Québec à Montréal)

  • Michèle Paulin

    (Concordia University)

Abstract

The present research was guided by the important need for a diversion from an economistic to a humanistic management perspective of sustainability. It concentrates on the current importance of digital strategic communication, particularly regarding the concept of corporate sustainability in the context of the conflict arena of the oil industry. The focus is on the comparison of the persuasive effectiveness of the framings of corporate versus activist NGO website communications and their impacts on the perception of the triple pillars of sustainability and, corporate greenwashing with respect to a proposed bituminous oil pipeline in Canada. The results of these pro and con messages were analyzed within the Elaboration Likelihood Model demonstrating a “non expert” peripheral route to a positive persuasion from exposure to the corporate communication versus an “expert” central route to a negative persuasion from the activist NGO communication. Subsequent exposure to the opposite website communication further emphasized the predominance of a negative persuasion based on both groups now being motivated as “expert” viewers of these strategic communications, leading to an important perception of greenwashing by participants resulting from vague claims, visual and linguistic contents of the corporate communication versus the mainly verifiable factual ones in that of the activist NGO.

Suggested Citation

  • Ronald J. Ferguson & Kaspar Schattke & Michèle Paulin, 2021. "Persuasions by Corporate and Activist NGO Strategic Website Communications: Impacts on Perceptions of Sustainability Messages and Greenwashing," Humanistic Management Journal, Springer, vol. 6(1), pages 117-131, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:humman:v:6:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1007_s41463-019-00072-8
    DOI: 10.1007/s41463-019-00072-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s41463-019-00072-8
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s41463-019-00072-8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gergely Nyilasy & Harsha Gangadharbatla & Angela Paladino, 2014. "Perceived Greenwashing: The Interactive Effects of Green Advertising and Corporate Environmental Performance on Consumer Reactions," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 125(4), pages 693-707, December.
    2. Kent Walker & Fang Wan, 2012. "The Harm of Symbolic Actions and Green-Washing: Corporate Actions and Communications on Environmental Performance and Their Financial Implications," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 109(2), pages 227-242, August.
    3. Thomas Lyon & A. Montgomery, 2013. "Tweetjacked: The Impact of Social Media on Corporate Greenwash," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 118(4), pages 747-757, December.
    4. Béatrice Parguel & Florence Benoît-Moreau & Cristel Russell, 2015. "Can evoking nature in advertising mislead consumers? The power of ‘executional greenwashing'," Post-Print hal-01463025, HAL.
    5. Frank Figge & Tobias Hahn & Stefan Schaltegger & Marcus Wagner, 2002. "The Sustainability Balanced Scorecard – linking sustainability management to business strategy," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(5), pages 269-284, September.
    6. Michael Pirson & Paul Lawrence, 2010. "Humanism in Business – Towards a Paradigm Shift?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 93(4), pages 553-565, June.
    7. David Markham & Anshuman Khare & Terry Beckman, 2014. "Greenwashing: A Proposal To Restrict Its Spread," Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management (JEAPM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 16(04), pages 1-16.
    8. Robert B. Gibson, 2006. "Beyond The Pillars: Sustainability Assessment As A Framework For Effective Integration Of Social, Economic And Ecological Considerations In Significant Decision-Making," Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management (JEAPM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 8(03), pages 259-280.
    9. Michel Dion, 2017. "Corporate Citizenship, Social Responsibility, and Sustainability Reports as “Would-be” Narratives," Humanistic Management Journal, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 83-102, October.
    10. Ian Thomson & Colin Dey & Shona Russell, 2015. "Activism, arenas and accounts in conflicts over tobacco control," Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 28(5), pages 809-845, June.
    11. Alfonso Siano & Francesca Conte & Sara Amabile & Agostino Vollero & Paolo Piciocchi, 2016. "Communicating Sustainability: An Operational Model for Evaluating Corporate Websites," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(9), pages 1-16, September.
    12. Poonam Arora & Gwendolyn A. Tedeschi & Janet L. Rovenpor, 2018. "Broadening the Frame around Sustainability with Holistic Language: Mandela and Invictus," Humanistic Management Journal, Springer, vol. 3(2), pages 233-251, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael Pirson & Cinzia Dessi & Michela Floris & Ernestina Giudici, 2021. "Humanistic Management: What Has Love Got to Do with it?," Humanistic Management Journal, Springer, vol. 6(1), pages 1-4, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bazlur RAHMAN, & Idris ALI, & Alexandru Mircea NEDELEA, 2017. "Greenwashing In Canadian Firms: An Assessment Of Environmental Claimsgreenwashing In Canadian Firms: An Assessment Of Environmental Claims," EcoForum, "Stefan cel Mare" University of Suceava, Romania, Faculty of Economics and Public Administration - Economy, Business Administration and Tourism Department., vol. 6(2), pages 1-8, july.
    2. Vera Ferrón‐Vílchez & Jesus Valero‐Gil & Inés Suárez‐Perales, 2021. "How does greenwashing influence managers' decision‐making? An experimental approach under stakeholder view," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 28(2), pages 860-880, March.
    3. Jennifer L. Robertson & A. Wren Montgomery & Timur Ozbilir, 2023. "Employees' response to corporate greenwashing," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(7), pages 4015-4027, November.
    4. Lee, Michael T. & Raschke, Robyn L., 2023. "Stakeholder legitimacy in firm greening and financial performance: What about greenwashing temptations?☆," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 155(PB).
    5. Lucia Gatti & Peter Seele & Lars Rademacher, 2019. "Grey zone in – greenwash out. A review of greenwashing research and implications for the voluntary-mandatory transition of CSR," International Journal of Corporate Social Responsibility, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 1-15, December.
    6. Yvette Sterbenk & Sara Champlin & Kasey Windels & Summer Shelton, 2022. "Is Femvertising the New Greenwashing? Examining Corporate Commitment to Gender Equality," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 177(3), pages 491-505, May.
    7. Honglei Mu & Youngchan Lee, 2023. "Greenwashing in Corporate Social Responsibility: A Dual-Faceted Analysis of Its Impact on Employee Trust and Identification," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(22), pages 1-17, November.
    8. Peng Hu & Xuming Li & Nian Li & Yiying Wang & Derek D. Wang, 2024. "Peeking into Corporate Greenwashing through the Readability of ESG Disclosures," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(6), pages 1-23, March.
    9. Ravi Dutta‐Powell & Joshua J. Rhee & Saul Wodak, 2024. "Two interventions for mitigating the harms of greenwashing on consumer perceptions," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 882-903, February.
    10. Jiajia Zhang & Jin Sun, 2021. "Green Talk or Green Walk: Chinese Consumer Positive Word-of-Mouth to Corporate Environmental Actions in Polluting Industries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-22, May.
    11. Eva Alexandra Jakob & Holger Steinmetz & Marius Claus Wehner & Christina Engelhardt & Rüdiger Kabst, 2022. "Like It or Not: When Corporate Social Responsibility Does Not Attract Potential Applicants," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 178(1), pages 105-127, June.
    12. Divinus Oppong-Tawiah & Jane Webster, 2023. "Corporate Sustainability Communication as ‘Fake News’: Firms’ Greenwashing on Twitter," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(8), pages 1-26, April.
    13. Francesca Bernini & Fabio La Rosa, 2024. "Research in the greenwashing field: concepts, theories, and potential impacts on economic and social value," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 28(2), pages 405-444, June.
    14. Wei Li & Weining Li & Veikko Seppänen & Timo Koivumäki, 2022. "How and when does perceived greenwashing affect employees' job performance? Evidence from China," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(5), pages 1722-1735, September.
    15. Marialuisa Saviano & Clara Bassano & Paolo Piciocchi & Primiano Di Nauta & Mattia Lettieri, 2018. "Monitoring Viability and Sustainability in Healthcare Organizations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(10), pages 1-23, October.
    16. Mahabubur Rahman & Saqib Aziz & Mathew Hughes, 2020. "The product‐market performance benefits of environmental policy: Why customer awareness and firm innovativeness matter," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(5), pages 2001-2018, July.
    17. Rongbing Huang & Yubo Huang, 2020. "Does Internal Control Contribute to a Firm’s Green Information Disclosure? Evidence from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(8), pages 1-23, April.
    18. Huang, Hongfu & Xing, Xinjie & He, Yong & Gu, Xiaoyu, 2020. "Combating greenwashers in emerging markets: A game-theoretical exploration of firms, customers and government regulations," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    19. Yinglin Huang & Claude Francoeur & Stephen Brammer, 2022. "What drives and curbs brownwashing?," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(5), pages 2518-2532, July.
    20. Zhang, Dongyang, 2023. "Can environmental monitoring power transition curb corporate greenwashing behavior?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 199-218.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:humman:v:6:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1007_s41463-019-00072-8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.