Talking green business: A qualitative study on the use of digital storytelling in sustainability communication to influence corporate success

Abstract

Sustainability is one of the most urgent and relevant topics today, permeating social and economic spheres alike. Especially corporations are faced with high stakeholder expectations, not least to be economically sustainable. To communicate a firms' efforts on ESG issues, a well-known but still underrated way is storytelling - nowadays mostly digital. Answers to the question how digital storytelling in sustainability communication of profit corporations influences their strategic success are provided within this study by the analysis of qualitative data from 14 semi-structured interviews across different communication practitioners of globally operating companies in Germany. As the study found out, digital storytelling in sustainability communication mainly contributes to intangible success factors, fulfilling its goal to foster an improvement of corporate reputation. The study provides evidence that this could further lead to a significant influence on the creation of tangible values, since even the outflow as the highest level of value creation could be traced back to communicative efforts. The findings contribute to the research on value creation through digital storytelling as a method in sustainability communication. They are the first of their kind that combine those three aspects empirically and stimulate the debate on communicative value creation providing an adaption of the DPRG/ICV Framework. Furthermore, the study gives practical implications for corporate communication professionals on the emerging format of storytelling.