As a sustainability or CSR professional, or a sustainability champion (someone who is motivated to try to promote sustainability in their workplace), you might work within a business or a public body. Or you might work as a consultant to a range of organisations. You are likely to be involved in meetings in which different perspectives on sustainability strategy and implementation are discussed and negotiated.

This research will involve analysing recordings and anonymised transcripts of workplace meetings, to find out:

• What specific discursive strategies are used to promote environmental and social factors in strategic multistakeholder meetings?
• What strategies are used to resist the prioritisation of sustainability issues in strategic meetings?

Why analyse meeting talk?

People can use different verbal strategies in meetings to make the case for a particular outcome. For example, discursive psychology and conversation analysis research shows that a speaker can:

• Describe themselves or others using categories that are associated with particular expertise to make their claims more credible.
• Use collective pronouns to portray a shared stake in an issue or to claim consensus.
• Use maximising or minimising language to strengthen a claim.
• Reformulate what another speaker has said to achieve a particular upshot.
• Tell stories and use ‘reported speech’ to strengthen plausibility.
• Avoid making a committed response by using hesitation and vague language.

How can you get involved?

Identify any upcoming strategic meetings that involve some discussion about sustainability factors – in any location or organisation. Note: we are especially interested in discussions about sustainable production and consumption in organisations. For example, how are product development decisions discussed? How are organisational purchasing/procurement strategies negotiated?

What do you need to do to take part?

• Get in touch with liz.cooper@hw.ac.uk to discuss suitability and gaining informed consent from meeting participants. Strict ethical protocols will be followed regarding confidentiality, anonymity and data security (Heriot-Watt University Social Sciences Ethics Committee approval 6358 granted on 8th January 2024).
• Record any relevant meetings (with consent from all present) e.g. online meetings can be easily video and audio recorded and files securely shared.

What outcomes are expected?

• Findings consisting of patterns of effective discursive strategies used to negotiate, influence, resist, or come to agreement.
• Findings will be shared in academic papers and at conferences.
• Training workshops on decision-making and influence for sustainability in organisations will be delivered to sustainability practitioners.

Questions? Contact Liz Cooper, sustainable business researcher, Heriot-Watt University (and former sustainability manager) liz.cooper@hw.ac.uk