Sustainability of Organizational Communications: A Framework for Performance Accounting

The established role of communication in sustainability studies is mainly to transmit information, about or for sustainability – i.e., disciplinary knowledge or mobilization of popular support. This paper addresses the sustainability of communication itself, with a performance accounting scheme for sustainability of organizational communication. Communication as ‘text ’ (framings provided by discursive formats and genres) and ‘conversation ’ (interactive, situational sense-making and exchange) is evaluated through standards of ‘performance ’ and ‘accounting ’ that extend beyond instrumentalism to encompass narrative and dramatistic logics. The framework considers sustainability across these dimensions of communications: (1) their physical-artifactual substratum – i.e., the ‘carriers ’ of communication, including technologies; (2) symbolic forms that convey information, meanings, and ideologies; and (3) relations and interactions that are basic to communicative role-playing. The goal is to enhance sustainability of knowledge, meaning, and participation in organizational settings