Despite looming ecological disaster, a persistent state of insufficient action seems commonplace amongst most organizations. This thesis critically explores how this impasse is constituted by discursive struggles surrounding the global ecological crisis. These struggles are situated within the context of global environmental governance – a power arena that has, over the past 25 years, become a defining battleground regarding environmental sustainability. Here, discourses of the ecological crisis are constituted by political contests amongst, most notably, multinational corporations, civil society organizations, and (trans)national policy actors. This thesis draws mainly from post-structural discourse theory, coupled with critical perspectives on organizations and the natural environment, to explore both the discursive practices that fix meanings surrounding the global ecological crisis, and the power effects thereof. The primary source of data is text – this study is explicitly interested in how discourses of the global ecological crisis evolve as the natural environment is (mis)represented in organizational disclosures. Despite recognition by management and organization scholars that the natural environment is indeed constructed, a functional separation between business and nature persists, the relationship of which is mostly examined from a firm-centric perspective. However, sustainability issues such as climate change transcend the confines of firm activity and operate across spatial and temporal dimensions. Hence, there is an urgent need to reconsider the business-nature dualism. To do so, this study adopts a multi-level, multi-method approach that permits a necessary degree of analytical and theoretical flexibility. The four individual articles that encompass this work, whilst drawing from different theoretical approaches, along with focusing on different levels of analysis, are underpinned by the contentious intersection between discourse, organizations and the natural environment. The first article concerns ‘macro talk’ and, operating on the field level, explores how a dominant understanding of business’ role in sustainable development is constituted during the UN Earth Summits in 1992, 2002, and 2012. The second article regards ‘corporate talk’ and, this time on an organizational level, examines how tensions between economic growth and environmental protection are avoided by the European oil and gas supermajors—BP, Shell and Total—through the practice of mythmaking. The third article takes a longitudinal approach and, also concerning ‘corporate talk’, examines how BP rearticulated a hegemonic discourse of fossil fuels, which, when enacted, reproduces corporate inaction on climate change. Finally, the fourth article emphasizes ‘resistance talk’, focusing on how climate activists, as part of the global fossil fuel divestment movement, engage in certain micro-level practices as they attempt to stigmatize the fossil fuel industry. In all, the findings from these articles suggest that organizations both represent nature as something to be conquered, dominated, and valued economically and as a pristine wilderness to be preserved for the enjoyment of future generations. In pursuing these two extremes concurrently, organizations self-perpetuate a social-symbolic deadlock that hinders finding sustainable ways for human systems to coexist with natural systems. This thesis contributes mainly to literature on organizations and the natural environment by illustrating how certain practices, mechanisms, and processes continuously redefine the business-nature relationship by facilitating a discursive struggle across multiple spatial and temporal dimensions. In doing so, there are implications both for policy and business organizations, which are discussed in the concluding chapter of this work.

The development of communication technology has also created new structures, able to challenge the traditional power roles of the communicative process. Social media have become a fruitful arena of this change due to their users having the possibility to respond to the producers’ messages. Thus, the traditional lineal structure turns to an interactional one and consequently, the lines become blurred between the roles of the dominant and dominated as assumed by the senders/producers and the receivers respectively. Controversial issues shed light on this ‘battle for power’, such as the sustainability actions and reporting of Zara and H&M. These companies are the leaders of the fast fashion industry; one of the most ‘unsustainable’ fields. Through a critical discourse analysis of the posts that the companies launch on their Facebook-sponsored accounts as well as the comments related to sustainability that they obtain from their users, the communicative process occurring in social media can be assessed. The aim of this analysis is to provide an insight into how the communicative process between sender and receiver in social media creates public opinion and affects the development of sustainability discourse. It has been shown that users have found in social media a powerful tool to challenge the companies’ power: they can comment on the informative product in question. Also the users have taken the sustainability discourse as the required ‘object’ when questioning a product’s reliability. The latter is in some way another means with which to challenge the companies’ power.

Community participation takes place when community members act together as subjects. It is argued here that community participation empowers when community members take decisions, or negotiate an equitable share in making the decisions that affect them. However, since participation takes place within a network of power relations it is not necessarily empowering but can take a range of forms from enforcement to empowerment, whereby empowerment may involve not only willing cooperation, but also resistance to outsider project objectives. This thesis explores these issues through a study of how people in three Philippine upland communities participated in soil conservation and livelihood restoration projects initiated by three different NGOs. The principal aim of the study was to identify and examine the changing discourses of development and participation held by the NGOs and by the members of the subject communities. The development discourses revolved around socio-ecology, described as the relationship between the culture and society of Filipino subsistence smallholders and the ecological units of their local environment. The failure of this existing socio-ecology under the pressure of increasing population density on a limited upland resource base was the stimulus for change in the study communities. The thesis compares the NGOs’ practice of engaging with the communities with their discourses of participation, and examines the importance of the relationships between the NGOs, government agencies and the communities for the success of the projects. The study identified several key factors in the empowerment of subject groups. Firstly, the need for a discourse that enables them to embark on socio-ecological change. For the Filipino communities examined here, the discourse of sustainability was validated by enabling the restoration of their livelihoods. Secondly, outside agencies, either NGO or government, may be needed to catalyse community change processes. Thirdly, the subjects need leaders who have the vision and skills to work for the desired livelihood and social development outcomes. Training activities of livelihood restoration proved highly significant in expanding women’s political space that led to opportunities for them to take up leadership, as well as giving capacity-building training for existing and future leaders which helped to equalize gender relations between men and women. Fourthly, the policy and program initiatives of host government agencies can synergize with community and partner agency activities at several levels, including resourcing and building the capacities of leadership.

With the help of various advertising strategies this study addresses the Swedish, plant-basedfood-production company Oatly, and their advertisements to see how the discourse onsustainability is approached. By using critical discourse analysis, and primarily Fairclough’sthree-dimensional-model for analysing discourse (1989, 1995) as well as the marketingframework AIDA, these advertisements have been analysed to see how the companymanages to tempt and persuade their consumers into consumption. This paper seeks tounderstand how Oatly portrays their products as the “right” choice, by acting on and creatingsocial, public understandings. But who decides what is “correct” and what is not, and howdoes a company act on contemporary social conventions to portray themselves as the “good”choice? Through a textual analysis of Oatly’s product descriptions on their website as well asof the product packaging in-store, this report has established that Oatly acts on publicunderstandings of environmental sustainability to persuade their audience into consumption.

Hållbarhet är idag ett välanvänt begrepp som förekommer inom flera områden. Vad hållbarhet anses vara må uppfattas som självklart, men hur begreppet och diskursen konstrueras, är inte lika självklart. Genom att se till två aktörer, med olika ambitioner, inom andrahandsmarknaden undersöker studien hur reklam bidrar till konstruerandet av uppfattandet av hållbarhet på olika sätt. Tidigare forskning visar att medierna formar och speglar samhället och att uttryck av hållbarhet idag används som täckmantel i form av grön retorik. Den visar även att kapitalism och ekologi har naturliga motsättningar, att vi måste konsumera mindre och lära oss se ”skräp” som resurser, något som andrahandsmarknaden kämpar med att förhålla sig till. Vi undersöker i denna studie Tradera och Myrornas förmedlade budskap av hållbarhet, med bakgrund i aktörernas intressen som vinstdrivet och ideellt. Syftet är att se hur reklam inom andrahandsmarknaden bidrar till konstruerandet av hållbarhetsdiskursen. Detta genom en multimodal kritisk diskursanalys av reklamfilmer från respektive aktör.   Resultatet visar att de olika aktörernas förmedlade budskap bidrar till hållbarhetsdiskursen på både traditionella och kreativa sätt. Traderas reklamfilm visade sig uttrycka underliggande budskap av ekologi som dessvärre hamnar i skuggan av kapitalistiska och materialistiska värderingar. Myrornas reklamfilm utmanar på många olika sätt dessa traditionellt kapitalistiska och materialistiska värderingar. Dessa olika uttryck av hållbarhet utgör till viss del konstruerandet av hållbarhetsdiskursen. Det visar även att särskilda budskap kan verka ideologiskt gynnsamma och att detta är något som aktörer utnyttjar. Vi drar slutsatsen att hållbarhetsdiskursen innefattar svårtolkade budskap som samexisterar och problematiserar vår relation till ett hållbart agerande. / Modern use of the term ‘sustainability’ is broad and varies across multiple industries. The general idea of sustainability is perceived as certain, yet sustainability discourse and the pillars of the term remain fluid. By looking at two stakeholders, with different ambitions, within the second hand market, the study is examining how advertising contributes to the different ways sustainability perceptions are constructed. Previous studies show that media both shapes and reflects our society, highlighting today’s use of the term sustainability is often to “green wash” communication. Studies also shows that capitalism and ecology have natural contradictions. Second hand markets face the challenge of raising awareness to change perceptions for society's to consumer less and begin to see “waste” as a resource. In this study we examine the message of sustainability, mediated by Tradera and Myrorna, in relation to their role as profit-driven, versus not for profit organisations. The purpose of the study is to examine how advertisement within the secondhand market, contributes to the construction of sustainability discourse. This is carried out through a multimodal critical discourse analysis of commercials. The results show that the different stakeholders' messages contribute to the sustainability discourse in both traditional and creative ways. Tradera’s advertisement expressed underlying statements of ecology, shadowed by capitalistic and materialistic values. However, Myrorna’s advertisement in many ways challenges these traditional capitalistic and materialistic values. To some extent these different expressions construct the discourse of sustainability. This further highlights that ideologically specific messages could work, however this is often exploited by businesses. The conclusion drawn from this study displays that the sustainability discourse involves messages difficult to interpret, which infers parallels to the convoluted relationship of society’s aim to advance sustainable development.