sustainable communication management

About the research project

Title: Sustainable Strategic Communication: How to create sustainable communication departments?

Team: Professor Ulrike Roettger, Lennart Rettler (University of Muenster)

Project period: March 2023 – December 2023

Sustainability is a much-discussed topic both in society and in communication management. The Communications Trend Radar 2021 identified sustainable communication as one of five trends and a future challenge.

In the past, communication research has focused primarily on the communication department’s efforts to communicate the corporate sustainability commitment to its stakeholders.

A new research project at the University of Muenster investigates ways into how strategic communication itself can become sustainable. In addition, the project aims to identify characteristics of sustainable strategic communication.

Methodology

First, the research team will examine concepts of sustainable communication (= the strategy to create a sustainable communication department) and sustainability communication (= the content). They will derive requirements for sustainable strategic communication and compile a sustainability framework.

Second, 12-15 interviews with experts from industry, science, NGOs, and other public fields, will be supplemented the framework with a broad range of insights.

The final framework of sustainable strategic communication will provide insights into creating more sustainable communication departments.

The results are expected by end of 2023.