Corporate

Internal communication for Communications:

An International
sustainability. Expanding corporate Journal
sustainability communication with
the inner development goals (IDGs) 121
Franzisca Weder and Julia M. Stranzl Received 26 February 2025
Revised 28 May 2025
Department of Business Communication, Institute for Strategic Organizational Accepted 18 June 2025
Communication, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria

Abstract
Purpose – The article at hand expands a recently published conceptual framework to understand sustainable
corporate communication as “communicative niche construction”. There, the transformative and
transformational potential of corporate communication is discussed, looking at the interaction between an
organization and its external environment. Here, we follow the call to explore internal relationship building and
its potential to cultivate sustainability from within an organization as a normative compass for corporate
communication.
Design/methodology/approach – The article connects the concept of “cultivation of sustainability” with
perspectives from internal communication to then put the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and,
correspondingly, the so-called inner development goals (IDGs) to the acid test with 10 explorative expert
interviews with internal communication and sustainability communication professionals conducted in 2024.
Findings – The IDGs aim to guide sustainable relationship-building within organizations and to re-focus on
organizational transformation, especially in times of external pressure, an increasing density of regulations and
policies and the realization that reaching the SDGs has moved into the far distance. However, communication is
only mentioned as skill and not seen as a relation-building, engaging and empowering process. In addition, the
IDGs are not very specific in terms of the people who implement them and the ones who are responsible for their
institutionalization. The responsibility to transform is mostly allocated on an individual level, and there is a lack
of specific topics and issues as well as space for internal communication and value negotiations.
Originality/value – The IDGs trigger a critical reflection of sustainability communication and demand to shift
the perspective from an external to an internal communication environment and further theorize and learn from
frameworks invented, designed and applied “only” in organizational practice. Despite the limitations of the
study, mainly the small number of practical insights, the article highlights that sustainability as a normative
guidepost can – and should – be communicatively cultivated from within organizations, teams, communities,
any form of tribes or through interpersonal relationships, which stimulates future empirical research in corporate
sustainability communication.
Keywords SDG, IDG, Corporate sustainability communication, Internal communication,
Employee communication, Relationship building
Paper type Research article

Introduction
In 2015, the United Nations provided the sustainable development goals (SDGs) as a
comprehensive framework for a sustainable world, also known as the Agenda2030
(UN, 2024). While the 17 SDGs work as a guiding framework for sustainability-related
activities for organizations with a fairly high degree of complexity and abstraction, they seem
to not further connect to concrete organizational or even individual action. However, there is
one aspect in this set of goals that points to the utter importance of Allies and alliances, of
collaborations to co-create solutions for the biggest problems in these “roaring 20ies” of the

© Franzisca Weder and Julia M. Stranzl. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is Corporate Communications: An
International Journal
published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, Vol. 30 No. 7, 2025
pp. 121-137
distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial Emerald Publishing Limited
purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license e-ISSN: 1758-6046
p-ISSN: 1356-3289
may be seen at Link to the terms of the CC BY 4.0 licence. DOI 10.1108/CCIJ-02-2025-0049

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 CCIJ century we live in (Canel, 2023; Mishra et al., 2024; Weder et al., 2021; Willis, 2016). This
30,7 focus on networks, Allies and relationships between various actors goes back to business
ethics thinking in the 1990s and the stakeholder-focused concept of corporate social
responsibility (CSR) from the early 2000s. CSR includes the allocation of responsibility to
organizations to care for society and their stakeholders and emphasizes the need to manage
their expectations in the systemic climate crisis (Rasche et al., 2023; Carroll, 2015).
The story of corporates taking responsibility has now been expanded to taking part in what
122 is called the Great Transformation (Polanyi, 2002), still predominantly told within the
boundaries of the existing capitalistic system (Weder et al., 2021) and still with a strong focus
on external stakeholders (Dathe, 2022). From a communication and language perspective, it
seems to be a rather romantic story, a story of sustainable economic success where
sustainability has made its terminological career within the narrative of economic progress and
prosperity (Wright and Nyberg, 2017). Therefore, organizations of all kinds and scope struggle
firstly with the term sustainability, often criticized as “empty signifier,” as a buzz word or
“wicked term” appearing to address fundamental concerns, however meaning very little or “all
things to all people” (Brown, 2016, p. 116). Secondly, in this strong narrative of economic
progress and prosperity, especially corporates predominantly focus on navigating and pleasing
external expectations, which also led to criticism of “washing” (e.g. greenwashing,
pinkwashing see Dans, 2018; de Freitas Netto et al., 2020). Accordingly, sustainability
communication is generally described as helping organizations, mainly corporates, to tell their
very own sustainability story towards external audiences (Weder, 2023b); it includes the
communication of an organization’s perspective on “sustainable development” and
“transformation,” the visualization of stakeholder engagement, and aims to gain
reputational benefit and the social license to operate (Hurst et al., 2020). This form of
rather functionalistic corporate communication is articulated and manifested in CSR and,
today, in so-called corporate ESG-related reporting (European Commission, 2023).
In parallel, over the past years, research studying corporate sustainability communication
has focused also mainly on how the external – or public – relationships are communicatively
managed (Golob et al., 2023; Weder, 2023a, 2024). Corporate communication in the context of
sustainable development and transformation is seen as a strategic tool or instrument to fulfill a
certain corporate purpose (e.g. Holtzhausen and Zerfass, 2015), with the SDGs or the
above-mentioned Agenda2030 as overarching goals. Internally, sustainability communication
is mostly about informing employees and initiating their support (e.g. Dong et al., 2024; Jiang
and Luo, 2024). We support Weder’s (2024) standpoint that specifically corporate
organizations have therewith “achieved something remarkable in relation to sustainability:
relevance through redundancy” (p. 253) – they created a “niche” constructed through
sustainability storytelling. However, while “niche construction” is happening through
alterations in an organizations’ external environment (creating and manifestation of a
“niche”), in the article at hand, we want to go one step further and claim that organizations
focusing predominantly on communication of sustainability and thus favoring external
relationships will not lead to transformation of the organization and thus actual change. This
corresponds not only with Weder’s (2024) call to explore “connectability and integrability
between various actors” (p. 255) and alternative communicative arenas within an organization
(Weder, 2024), but also with insights gained in internal communication studies, pointing to the
immense potential of strong internal relationships for organizational transformation and
change (e.g. Men et al., 2020; Yue, 2022; Yue et al., 2019, 2023): Internal communication
scholars have shown and discussed over years how internal communication professionals,
managers, employees and other internal stakeholders strategically contribute through their
communication to the perception and active support of change processes. Overall, strong
internal relationships are defined as indispensable to, firstly, initiate internal changes and
secondly, to not lose contact with employees and fail to address their expectations during a
transformation. Hence, in relation to sustainable development as an overarching framework
and sustainability as a guiding principle toward socio-cultural transformation, organizations

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 often underestimate the transformative power of internal communication and specific Corporate
communicators in terms of sustainable change. Thus, the article at hand argues for the key role Communications:
of transformative internal communication and thus for refocusing on internal relationship An International
building in the context of a sustainable transformation and Agenda2030. This requires a more Journal
holistic and critical PR perspective, where all conversations within organizational contexts
must be included in sustainability communication concepts and strategies. It also needs to be
addressed, where people are included in debates about sustainability, encouraged to speak and
negotiate the values and principles to follow, heard by their organizations, and attributed with 123
communication responsibility to support a sustainable transformation. Following, it seems to
be necessary to further explore internal relationship building and its potential to cultivate
sustainability from within an organization as a normative compass for corporate
communication.
The article starts with a theoretical discussion of how (much) corporate communication
research is currently inspired by but also challenged by the emergence of sustainability
communication in the realm of the SDGs and Agenda2030. From there, the main conceptual
part of the article starts with a critique of the extreme focus on external relationship building
dominating academic and practical approaches to CSR communication, sustainability
management and sustainability communication. This is followed by reflections on insights
from internal communication research and the first critical concept in sustainability
communication, the concept of “cultivation of sustainability” (Weder, 2023b).
After these conceptual considerations, we introduce the so-called inner development goals
(IDGs), developed as a complement to the SDGs. The IDGs are a nonprofit, open-source
initiative committed to fostering internal communicative relations to develop towards more
sustainable futures (Inner Development Goals, 2025). By putting this concept to the acid test
and reflecting the potential and limitations of the IDGs as a guiding framework for
transformation through a small number of explorative expert interviews with internal
communication and sustainability communication professionals, this article debates an
internal perspective on communication for sustainability and sustainability as a new “norm”
and principle of action.

Corporate communication informs sustainability communication research – and

vice versa
Sustainability communication is a term that describes an emerging research area (Weder et al.,
2021; Weder and Eriksen, 2023) and – from an applied perspective – includes all
communication processes and structures that are related to a better ecological, economic
and social life (Ziemann, 2011). Exploring the research and conceptual work that has been
done so far (Golob et al., 2023; Newig et al., 2013), sustainability communication can be
clearly linked to the theoretical body and core frameworks in the field of corporate
communication. We want to start this article by looking into how corporate communication
research has actually inspired the emergence of sustainability communication as a research
field in comparison to CSR communication research as an area that is rather linked to business
and management as well as business ethics (Carroll, 2015; Golob et al., 2013; Rasche
et al., 2023).
Let’s start with the latter. As mapped in Figure 1, the turn in organizational and
management studies toward CSR management and CSR communication was influenced by
concepts developed in stakeholder theories and business ethics (Carroll, 2015; Freeman, 2011;
Van Marrewijk and Werre, 2003).
Since the late 1990s, the emergence of the concept of CSR has been forged by a rapid
growth of global communication structures and processes and has been challenged by
increasing critical scrutiny of corporate activities and criticism from stakeholders (Blowfield
and Murray, 2014). Thus, from an organizational and management perspective, the role of
businesses in our society has been debated, conceptualized and theorized for nearly 3 decades

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 CCIJ
30,7

124

Figure 1. Pathway of corporate sustainability communication from stakeholder management to CSR, ESG and
internal communication. Created by authors

now in multiple dimensions (e.g. Diehl et al., 2017; Ihlen et al., 2011; Schneider and
Schmidpeter, 2012). From there, CSR management and communication were further
established in academia and communication practice; today, CSR communication is
operationalized as part of management concepts predominantly within organizations and
researched with an increased interest in regulations and institutionalization of CSR (Rasche
et al., 2023) and its impact (Coelho et al., 2023).
Concepts and frameworks to explain and explore various forms of strategic and in
particular corporate communication have also been stimulated by stakeholder and
management theories. Furthermore, the idea is that organizations are being
communicatively embedded in and intertwined with society and thus are responsible for
these relations (Karmasin and Weder, 2014; Zerfass et al., 2021). This has led to new work and
concepts of public interest communication (Johnston and Pieczka, 2018) and reflections on
concepts of empowerment and participation in the field of communication for social change
(Servaes, 2023). In addition, it fosters innovative perspectives for the role of corporate
communication in initiating possible radical changes both in society and within organizations
(Tkalac Ver�ci�c and Ver�ci�c, 2025; Valentini, 2021; Weder, 2024) and on communication
professionals as potential change agents and “ethics guardians” (Holtzhausen and Zerfass,
2015; Pompper, 2018; Weder and Weaver, 2023).
In her call for public relations practitioners as well as academics to further develop PR
concepts and frameworks to better understand the impact and role of PR in the Great
Transformation and in transition processes, Canel (2023, 2021) sees particular potential in re-
thinking organizational communication, change management, risk, crisis communication,
issue management, and ethics. She points to the key role of corporate communication in co-
creating common ground and goals in organizations, which has also been emphasized by
Ansell (2022) in relation to sustainable development. However, so far, the field of

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 sustainability communication – like CSR communication research – has started with a strong Corporate
focus on external communication processes and thus a focus on communication of Communications:
sustainability (see Figure 1). Corporate communication mainly favors relationships and An International
interactions with an organization’s external stakeholders to foster reputation and image Journal
(Schaltegger, 2011). There is not only a limited number of publications that demarcate
sustainability communication as field of research (Weder, 2025); much more, sustainability
communication is described as a field of application for existing managerial concepts of
corporate communication (see Golob et al., 2023; Verk et al., 2021). Furthermore, the field 125
misses the deep dives into the organization (Weder, 2024). Reviewing the also very small
number of internal CSR or internal sustainability communication publications, the current
focus lies in informing employees about certain actions and planned initiatives related to
sustainability. Employee participation is also discussed as part of CSR reporting, often
subordinated to the goal to activate employee’s pro-environmental behavior (e.g. Duthler and
Dhanesh, 2018; Dong et al., 2024; Jiang and Luo, 2024; Kataria et al., 2013; Lee et al., 2024;
Offermann et al., 2024). Following, the constitutive role of internal stakeholders’
communication is not part of this discussion so far – while interesting empirical
observations would support a more nuanced perspective. For example, a qualitative study
on sustainability communication in organizations concludes that “communication about
sustainability is not organized in a way that facilitates discussion or exchange of ideas about
sustainability” (Barendsen et al., 2021, p. 10). Also, Kataria et al. (2013) highlighted more
than 10 years ago that “employees could be a greater source of generating new ideas for
sustainability implementation” (p. 49). Onkila and Sarna (2022) problematize more recently,
that “employees are mainly perceived as implementers of top-down sustainability policies and
as mediators towards organizational CSR-related benefits, and the focus has been placed on
the question of how employees can contribute to CSR within their employing organization”
(p. 443). These insights show the strong dominance of a rather functionalistic and information-
based understanding of internal communication and internal relationship building (e.g. Heide
and Simonsson, 2021) for the context of sustainability communication research.
This “blind spot” supports Canel’s (2021, 2023) call to find new perspectives and concepts
in sustainability communication research to address the Great Transformation. While a
constitutive or even performative perspective on communication could broaden not only
corporate communication research, explorations of sustainability or transformative
communication from this perspective are missing so far. Only single authors mention
certain aspects or the need for it (e.g. Schoeneborn et al., 2020, 2024) or speak of the co-
creation of sustainability as a guiding principle of action within organizations (Weder, 2023b).
A changed perspective to a less deterministic and functionalistic (information-oriented, pre-
structured) would lead to a rather critical approach to internal sustainability communication.
This is stimulated by the question of the potential of internal relationship building to foster a
sustainable transformation from within an organization.

Sustainable internal relationships to engage, communicatively empower and transform

The first chapter of this article has shown the professionalization of communication of
sustainability in corporate communication practice and why corporate sustainability
communication research predominantly works with a functionalistic understanding of
communication, focusing on the external organizational environment. This led to two
challenges: firstly, it is still hard to demarcate sustainability communication from CSR
communication (Golob et al., 2023) and secondly, it neglects the importance of internal
communication about sustainability and thus organizational communication for sustainability
(Weder and Eriksen, 2023). As outlined in the introduction, this article aims to expand existing
work on corporate sustainability communication with a critical and constructivist perspective.
Therefore, we will inform and complement one of the rare critical concepts of sustainability
communication, working with a constitutive and performative perspective on corporate

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 CCIJ communication, the concept of “cultivation of sustainability” (Weder, 2023b), complemented
30,7 by insights and knowledge from critical internal communication research.
Key of this concept is the idea that sustainability is not just normalized through an increase
(or influx) of communication of sustainability towards the share- and stakeholders, but
sustainability is also an organizing principle in organizations. Weder (2023b) describes related
communication about and for sustainability as negotiation process or “dialectic process of
questioning and stabilization”, also in inner-organizational conversational spaces. We follow
126 this thinking and Weder’s (2024) call to explore internal relationship building and alterations
as part of transformative or sustainable corporate communication and shift our perspective
towards the relationships built internally and the conversations where sustainability as a
principle of action is (re)negotiated and by the same time guides these conversations
(dialectic). This process of “cultivation of sustainability” from within organizations is further
explained by the author in the following way: “The conversations, the language that is used and
how it is used, the narratives created and how (much) these narratives create bindingness
across various actors and validity for future (corporate) action is where transformation
happens as normalization and/or cultivation of a new guiding principle, of sustainability as
new norm” (Weder, 2024, p. 245; also see Weder, 2023b). However, internal relationship-
building as part of corporate sustainability communication is not further explained.
This is why we bring in perspectives and findings from internal communication scholars
who outline in detail the value of internal relationship building. Guiding for this research is the
concept of organizational–employee relationship, “defined as the degree to which an
organization and its employees trust one another, agree on who has the rightful power to
influence, experience satisfaction with each other, and commit themselves to the other” (Men,
2014, p. 261). Such high-quality internal relationships contribute to achieving an
organization’s goals and development, but also protecting the reputation in turbulent times
(Men, 2014). Particularly during changes, previous investments in relationship building get
visible (e.g. Kim et al., 2019; Men et al., 2020; Yue, 2022; Yue et al., 2019, 2023). To cultivate
strong internal bonds (openness, commitment, and behavioral support for organizational
change), scholars introduce, discuss and test various strategic communication approaches in
different settings: Besides a transparent communication approach that relies more on
informing employees about the status quo, planned steps and outcomes (e.g. Jiang and Men,
2017), scholars emphasize the effectiveness of two-way symmetrical communication and,
thus, approaches that rely on dialogue, feedback and openness and aiming for “mutual
understanding” (e.g. Kang and Sung, 2017; Kim and Rhee, 2011; Men and Stacks, 2014).
Here, internal listening is key for long-term relationships (Qin and Men, 2021). Yue (2022), for
example, shows that bridging strategies (where an organization is open for feedback and
criticism and tries to meet stakeholders’ expectations) are more effective during changes than
messaging-based buffering strategies (where an organization bets on persuasion, control and
manipulation via language and signaling) to foster employees’ openness to change. Moreover,
internal communication researchers point to the relevance of relational approaches like
appreciating employees (Einwiller et al., 2021; Stranzl and Ruppel, 2024) to cultivate strong
internal relationships. Besides the central communication responsibility of internal
communication professionals in internal relationship building (see Men, 2021), scholars
debate the specific role of managers and their leadership styles (e.g. appreciative, authentic,
transformational leadership) (e.g. Men, 2014; Men and Stacks, 2014; Stocker et al., 2014) as
highly influential for workplace experiences and relationship building. For example,
“transformational leaders convey a strong sense of purpose and collective mission and
motivate employees by communicating inspirational vision and high-performance
expectations” (Men, 2014, p. 259).
Critical and constructivist internal communication scholars criticize the strong emphasis on
authorities (e.g. CEO, managers, departments): “The overly simplistic transmission view of
communication [in an organizational context] has always been problematic, but the increasing
complexity in contemporary society makes it even more challenging. Furthermore, this

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 organization-centric and sender-oriented view of communication is also in stark contrast to Corporate
goals focusing on collaboration, engagement, and trustful relationships that most Communications:
organizations claim to aspire for” (Heide and Simonsson, 2021, p. 263). Derived from their An International
critique, cultivating strong internal relationships needs a “communicative logic,” where the Journal
communication of all kinds of internal stakeholders gets visible and supported. This is an
important step in broadening thinking about internal communication processes to cultivate
strong internal relationships. Employees are likewise defined as strategic communicators –
their internal and external communication in various channels, online and offline, is seen as 127
impactful for internal and external relationship building and transformation (Andersson, 2022;
Heide and Simonsson, 2011, 2021; Verhoeven and Madsen, 2022).
Based on this corpus of knowledge and perspectives, we can extend our current perspective
on corporate sustainability communication research (and practice). To “cultivate
sustainability” as a guiding principle from within an organization, strong internal
relationships guide, motivate and empower different internal stakeholders to foster
transformation. Moreover, it raises new questions about the strategic role of different
internal stakeholders in the context of sustainable change and transformation. “Cultivating
sustainability,” therefore, not only depends on external relationship building and internally on
the communication effort of managers and other authorities. Rather, relational internal
communication and the communication of various internal stakeholders (e.g. employee
groups, employee representatives) should be seen and empowered as they are responsible and
influential with their communication about sustainability.

Internal sustainability communication with the IDGs

Studying communication of, about and for sustainability, we stumbled over the so-called
IDGs, a set of “Transformational Skills for Sustainable Development”. Developed as a
response to the “blind spot in our efforts to create a sustainable global society” and the need for
“abilities, qualities or skills” (Inner Development Goals, 2025) among individuals, groups and
organizations to achieve the vision of a sustainable society and the Agenda2030, they were
introduced as complement to the – more technical – SDGs. The core idea of the IDG-
framework is that change starts within, within people, but also within organizations. The
development process of the IDGs started in 2020, driven by the Eksk€aret foundation
(Stockholm, Sweden). The guiding question was: which skills are required to realize the
transformation of society that is needed to get closer to fulfilling the SDGs? To answer this
question, 800 international experts from science, neuroscience, psychology, personal
development, business consulting and communication, organizational development, climate
communication and leadership worked on potential skill sets and competences and evaluated
them regarding their effectiveness. In October 2022, the IDG framework was presented at the
first IDG Summit in Stockholm. The final framework includes 23 skills in 5 dimensions:
“Being,” “Thinking,” “Collaborating,” “Acting” and “Relating” (IDG #3, see Figure 2).
Worldwide, there are now over 600 IDG Hubs, framed as emerging ecosystems through
individual relation building. Corporate managers, CEOs and communication professionals
work in these Hubs. Furthermore, businesses like Google, Ikea, Ericsson or the Husqvarna
Group are members of the network and try to apply the IDGs. On a macro-level, even countries
like Costa Rica, Albania or India committed to the IDG-Framework, also supported by the
United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the European Parliament. The framework
is published open source and thus a “creative commons” that again builds on the power of
communication (Inner Development Goals, 2025).
The IDG Foundation, aligning the mentioned Ekskaret Foundation with the IMD Business
School for Management, The Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University and the
World Business Council for Sustainable Development, WBCSD, explains the five dimensions
further. The buzzwords here are: “Passion,” “Simplicity,” “Lifelong learning,” “Co-creation”
and “Creating Ecosystems.” These principles contain the skills and competences, clearly

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 CCIJ
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128

Figure 2. Overview IDGs. Inner Development Goals (2025)

highlighting the concrete impact of communication: passionate communication creates

connections; simplicity in messages reduces complexity of sustainability issues and the
climate change narrative; life-long learning communicates motivation and focus on processes
and not only on results; co-creational character of communication makes every conversation
about sustainability visible. Every communication process counts and organizes the
organization. The IDGs understand the organization as an emerging ecosystem, allowing
agility and the inclusion of multiple perspectives (Inner Development Goals, 2025).
Especially, the dimension of “relating” (see Figure 2) is core to these competence dimensions
defined as “appreciating, caring for and feeling connected to others such as neighbors, future
generations or the biosphere, helps us create more just and sustainable systems and societies
for everyone” (Inner Development Goals, 2025). However, concrete practical examples are
not included so far. Rather, the focus of the IDGs is – next to individual development as a
starting point – the identification of missing links between the people in an organization and
between the people and the organization. Key aspects (e.g. appreciation) mentioned here
sound very familiar from an internal communication perspective, since this practical
framework specifically stresses an internal perspective to initiate and achieve a change (e.g.
Men et al., 2020).
Since the SDGs are often criticized as being “too abstract” and rather “topical” (Brown,
2016), the question arises whether the IDGs are actually useful and stimulating for the
organization and practice of internal relationship building in the context of transformation.
What are the potential and limitations of this kind of framework?
Thus, we explored if the IDGs are only old wine in new bottles or actually guideposts for
cultivating sustainability within organizational contexts and put the IDGs to the acid test to
finally expand corporate sustainability communication, as the title of the article suggests.

Method
We decided to conduct semi-structured expert interviews with internal communication and
sustainability communication professionals in European business settings and PR agencies
who apply the IDGs in their organizations or who have taken part in their implementation at
least. Qualitative research seeks to understand social and individual practices and behavior
and supports dissecting complex processes (Bryman, 2016). We used a specific type of

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 semi-structured interviews, so-called reconstruction interviews (Schwinges, 2024), which Corporate
enable the researcher to examine the communication roles of the interviewees in relation to Communications:
their organizational context, including the normative guideposts directing their practices and An International
other people. We therefore asked participants to talk about specific examples of sustainability Journal
communication (“reconstruction”) and explicitly describe the role the SDGs and the IDGs
played in those initiatives, the competences that they drew on and the role of communication in
their work. The following guiding question structured the interviews: How do the IDGs help
internal communication sustainability communication professionals to communicate for 129
sustainability and towards the SDGs?
Following ethics approval, in our recruitment of interview partners, we used a convenience
snowballing process (Noy, 2008), searching for potential interview partners through our
professional (sustainability) communicators’ networks, including their recommendations and
references, without aiming for a representative sample due to the explorative nature of the
project. Snowballing means to identify a small number of initial subjects who meet the study
criteria and then – here conceptualized as a linear snowballing process – the people
interviewed are asked to refer to others who also meet the criteria. Snowball sampling often
produces a sample bias; however, it is recommended for exploring relationships between
groups and organizational structures, and thus the “natural and organic social networks” in
which individuals are embedded (Noy, 2008, p. 329) – which was key for getting a better
understanding of internal relationship building guided by sustainability as a moral compass.
At the time of writing the article, five interviews have been completed (two with internal
communication professionals working in one of the TOP 10 PR Agencies in Austria, 2 in
Germany with sustainability communication professionals again working in one of the TOP 10
Sustainability PR-Agencies and one “IDG ambassador,” connected to the IDG hub in
Sweden). Since there was a demand based on the first results to dig deeper and gain better
insights, especially in terms of the role of internal communication in institutionalizing and
operationalizing the IDGs, we conducted five more interviews with IDG ambassadors and
Trainers in Austria and Germany (1 Trainer, 4 Communication Experts, contacted in their role
as IDG ambassador). The interviews were conducted through Zoom or Teams, which
automatically generated a transcript; each interview lasted between 30 and 60 min.
The transcribed interviews have been treated as text material that we analyzed with a
two-step inductive category formation, following the research questions above. This question-
led approach was used in our qualitative content analysis, supported by the open-access
analysis web tool QCAmap (Mayring, 2019). It also helped to avoid working with presumed
aspects of the IDG framework or previous academic literature when exploring complex social
phenomena like sustainable development (Denzin and Lincoln, 2011). For the article at hand,
we focus on the findings related to the potential of sustainability frameworks, and the IDGs in
particular, for the cultivation of sustainability through internal sustainability communication.

Sustainability communication guided by the IDGs

The interviews with the internal communication and sustainability communication
professionals show that the IDG framework is predominantly introduced by people in the
position of a “Sustainability Manager” or “Sustainability Expert.” This is not too surprising
from a sustainability communication perspective. Furthermore, internal relationship building
is described by the participants as the core aspect of the framework of the IDGs. They point to
necessary coordination, connection and knowledge sharing between people responsible for
sustainability communication and those responsible for internal communication. The main
purpose of this article was to take a deep dive and explore the potentials and limitations of the
IDGs, and the role communication plays in creating inner relationships for communicatively
“cultivating sustainability” from within organizations. Related to the IDGs, the interviewees
describe the dynamic of and multi-perspectivity on sustainability communication as
connecting people and creating connections in the following way:

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 CCIJ The biggest challenge is to explain and onboard the highest management. The second one is to pull it
down to the middle management, where you have many people right in the company and they need to
30,7 change their mindset, they need to be open. (. . .) also challenging is onboarding the crucial people, the
management, the influencers within the organization, then when you have them, when you are in the
same line, then it’s much easier to change the system (Sustainability PR Expert)

This supports the key role of specific communicators in any processes of introducing,
130 institutionalizing and thus “cultivating” new organizational values. Furthermore, it outlines
that sustainability is not a guiding principle so far – in practice, a dialectical process of
questioning and stabilization is not visible yet; instead, internal communication and
sustainability communication professionals have to fight for awareness for this topic, for
their methods, and their strategic impact.
The expert interviews also show that sustainability communication is no longer a
“playground” for storytelling and issue management towards external audiences or the
employees; instead, it is highly regulated and structured, corporate sustainability
communication needs to be done. Specific structures like policies, guidelines, regulations
and normative frameworks like the SDGs guide these communication professionals to work on
sustainability issues and to raise awareness for sustainability as a principle of action. One
interviewee shared their reflections on “walking the talk”: “We cannot only communicate, we
need to show the stuff that we’re doing. And that we’re on the right track. We are makers (. . .)
and a corrective to the inside” (Internal Communication Expert).
In the processes of creating connections and building relations, the interviewees
particularly mentioned not only the IDGs as a useful guideline, but much more their own –
sometimes radical – value framework and morality:
“The mastermind is the best way to describe my role – sorry – but because it’s like you have the topic
and nobody is actually helping you, so you need to think okay I want to communicate something and
then you really need to be creative, so you need to have a vision, you need to be a visionary, you need to
be open-minded, you need to really believe in that, you need to live your persuasions, you really need
to walk what you talk, you really need to be in that place” (Sustainability PR Expert); this is expressed
by another expert as “conversational intelligence” (Internal Communication Expert).

The IDGs seem to embrace, foster and support individual value frameworks and morality:
“My engagement for sustainability has increased massively; the main idea of the IDGs is to
keep the sustainability discourse going and create links between people and the SDGs” (IDG
Ambassador).
From a very positive perspective, the IDGs provide a baseline for argumentation,
participation and individual development. One interview partner mentioned that the employees
in their organization are much more resilient and thus easier to engage for sustainability-related
projects and issues, since the IDGs have been implemented: “The IDGs are the power from
within organizations to reach the SDGs” (Internal Communication Expert). This is also the
vision of a communication professional with 25 years of experience in sustainability PR:
The IDG-Skills are muscles that need to be trained, to make organizations and systems resilient and
impactful – but also open for transformation. . . . appreciation is sometimes articulated in a good way
and sometimes in a not so excellent way. . . . if we cultivate new forms of communication between
people, then the quality and the resonance of communication changes (Sustainability PR Expert).

However, it seems that the framework mostly functions as a “wakeup-call,” a point of

orientation for key role holders (e.g. sustainability manager) and at the same time
legitimization for internal and sustainability communication professionals to look closer at
what is happening within the organization. Related practical exercises are described in the
open source IDG-Toolkit that we’ve been directed to by the interview partners (Inner
Development Goals, 2025), linked to all 23 skills. Most interesting, our participants
highlighted the need for training in sustainability communication between professionals and
managers in relation to the five cornerstones.

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 Discussion and outlook Corporate
From a theoretical perspective, the article complements a recently published article on the Communications:
transformative and transformational potential of sustainability (Weder, 2024) and expands the An International
concept of “cultivation of sustainability” with an internal communication perspective. Stumbling Journal
over the IDGs, a framework for sustainability communication and relations within an organization
(Inner Development Goals, 2025), which has inspired many organizations to refocus on internal
relation building in their own transformation towards the SDGs, we put the framework to the acid
to, firstly, learn more about the potential and constraints of cultivating sustainability from within 131
an organization; secondly, theorizing a framework that emerged in (communication and
consulting) practice always creates an impact on the framework and thus offers learnings for the
people working with it. While the IDGs can be used as a starting point for a reconsideration of
internal relationship building as part of transformative communication in corporate sustainability
communication scholarship in theory, they need to be more specific in terms of the people who
implement them and the ones who are responsible for their institutionalization. The expert
interviews with key internal and sustainability communication professionals, who have
experienced the implementation of the IDGs in business settings, point to, firstly, relational
and, secondly, co-creational communication being key for internal sustainability communication.
The IDGs create attention for a sustainable turn by adopting social responsibility through the
necessary engagement in internal relationship building. In the interviews with the experts, we
learned that internal sustainability communication is more than “just” raising awareness for the
SDGs as an external set of goals. Instead, sustainability as a guiding principle of action can only be
cultivated within organizations by focusing on more human-related aspects in communication.
Following, what is debated by internal communication scholars in terms of the importance of
relationship building for transformation and changes and effective communication approaches
(e.g. Kang and Sung, 2017; Men et al., 2020; Yue, 2022; Yue et al., 2019, 2023) and relational
communication (e.g. Einwiller et al., 2021; Stranzl and Ruppel, 2024) can and should be
transferred to the field of corporate sustainability communication as well.
For PR and communication professionals, as well as consultants, sustainability and CSR
managers and any other “agents of change”, the critical aspects of the IDGs are that.
(1) Communication is defined as skill and not (yet) as relationship building, connecting
and the organization constituting process.
(2) Responsibility for transforming is allocated to an individual level; the organization is
more in the background.
(3) There is a lack of consideration of specific topics or issues that the relationship
building is directed toward.
(4) And a lack of spaces where relationship building actually takes place in, where
negotiations and co-creation can actually happen in.
Following, scholarship can learn and further develop their concepts and questions based on the
IDG thinking, but by the same time, “cultivation of sustainability” from within organizations
through and with the IDGs needs a different and much broader understanding of
communication at least. Derived from this connection, guiding questions for future research
in the field of internal sustainability communication are:
(1) What is necessary on an organizational level to create awareness for the “cultivation of
sustainability” as a strategic internal communication goal?
(2) How can multiplicators like managers be recruited to engage in sustainability
communication?
(3) Who is responsible for fostering strategic internal sustainability communication and
who are other agents of change holding thought leadership?

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 CCIJ (4) How can an organization and specific communicators involve all internal stakeholders
30,7 in sustainability communication, overcoming a rather functionalistic and information-
based understanding of internal sustainability communication?
(5) What sort of relationship-building strategies do employees need to activate their
different communicative roles (Verhoeven and Madsen, 2022) for sustainability? And
what are the potential challenges and barriers in attributing and acknowledging this
132 communication role? (Andersson, 2019a)
(6) How can relational communication strategies (e.g. Einwiller et al., 2021; Stranzl and
Ruppel, 2024; Yue, 2022) be used to foster an open, critical, dissent-oriented internal
discourse about sustainability?
(7) And, since this seems to be crucial for any work on communication of, about and for
sustainability: how is it possible to overcome sustainability as an “empty signifier” or
“wicked term” (Brown, 2016) from within an organization?
To further explore the potential of the IDGs, the role of communication in working with the IDGs
for transformation, and to see how (much) sustainability is normalized or actually “cultivated”
and, thus, manifested in these relationships, we need to think beyond – here, we see great
potential in something that is not yet part of the IDGs: discussing communicative responsibility.
Andersson (2019b) states that informing and “educating employees is not enough if they are to
take greater communication responsibility. Rather, increasing employees’ predisposition
towards taking responsibility is a complex issue where several factors contribute, and which are
important to consider in internal communication management” (Andersson, 2019b, p. 72).
Importantly, the interviews show that climate openness, management communication, and
perceived importance of their own communication significance contribute to an employee’s
predisposition towards taking communication responsibility. In the context of a sustainable
transformation, creating such a communication climate is seen as crucial to foster a debate about
communication responsibility and empower employees as strategic communicators. However,
this still needs to be addressed by corporate sustainability scholars.
We acknowledge the limitations of the small sample of experts that have been interviewed,
which does not allow for any generalizable results. Nevertheless, the findings of the qualitative
exploratory interviews offer deeper insights into the role of innerorganizational relationship
building through corporate communication and how this particularly plays out in the
sustainability context. More research is needed to investigate now how corporate
communication can further articulate and communicatively organize the contribution to
socio-ecological, political communicative arenas within an organizational and cultural
transformation (Ackerman, 2023; Sommerfeldt, 2013; Weder, 2023b) and how (much)
employees can be further enabled to take communicative responsibility and contribute to
sustainable transformation.

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Franzisca Weder can be contacted at: [Link]@[Link]

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