Page 194 - Sustainability Communication Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Theoritical Foundations

15 Computer Support for Cooperative Sustainability Communication 177

Moreover, Habermas’s concept of society helps explain why corporate sustainability
is still a challenge for companies. Sustainability is not a generalized action orienta-
tion in the economic system today. Sustainability is ignored as long as it is not
compatible with conventional generalized action orientations like economic
efficiency and profit maximization. The constellations of compatibility are called
win-win situations. Some proposed approaches in the field of environmental
accounting are based on the idea of being compatible with dominant action orienta-
tions, for example environmental cost accounting or eco-efficiency analysis.
However, the term efficiency does not cover important aspects of the underlying
action orientation. Economic efficiency is intimately connected with short-term
value creation whereas ecological efficiency is more of a contribution to the long-term
viability of an organization. In the end, eco-efficiency is still incompatible with
today’s dominant action orientations in our economy.
How could corporate sustainability become a generalized action orientation in
organisations? Habermas ’s answer is communicative action. Nowadays, computers
can play a prominent role as a powerful medium of everyday communication. But
before discussing computer support for communicative action, it is important to
keep the limits of communication and discourse in mind. This results in a two-phase
approach of sustainable development in organisations: (1) in the first step sustain-
ability communication plays an important role. It supports the organization in ques-
tioning tradition. Sustainability communication discloses the organization (Spinosa
et al. 2001). In a subsequent step, (2) new routines gradually replace old ones. It is
a question of sustainability management and the transformation of new generalized
action orientations into effective systemic mechanisms.

Two Phases of Sustainable Development in Organisations

As mentioned above the main problem of communicative action is that it increases
complexity. Ideally, all action should be based on communication and discourse. It
should be consensus-based action. Computer-based communication support systems
like email and instant messaging can increase the efficiency of consensus-based
action. And computer systems can help to handle increased complexity by designing
social infrastructures that make collective activity visible (Erickson et al. 2002), by
visualizing online conversations (Donath 2002), by supporting navigation in social
networks with the aid of tag clouds (Mesnage and Carman 2009) etc. Computers as
a medium and as a tool increase the domain of consensus-based action. It is then
easier for organisations to deal with unexpected situations and ill-defined problems.
However, the possibilities of computer support are limited. The application of com-
municative action is not an all-or-none question. The question is how to organize the
relationship between communicative action in organisations and delinguistified coor-
dination of action. To clarify the relationship, three different aspects can be distin-
guished: (1) Corporate communication is not concerned with operational routine
action. The domains of communicative action are non-routine activities. The most