How can food and beverage companies bridge the psychological gap to sustainability for employees and inspire them to participate?

Abstract

With the societal development we are currently experiencing, coupled with the pollution it brings, sustainability has become a term used in various contexts, often losing its essence. For many, the word sustainability has become grandiose with decreasing realistic content. Sustainability is measured and reported in numbers, and discussed using terminology that requires education to comprehend the meaning. The demands for reporting grow in line with the need for sustainability, creating an increasing psychological distance to the concepts and its significance. This increasing requirement for transparency creates a widening gap between the concept of sustainability and its practical application. Consequently, sustainability is losing its essence and comprehension, becoming merely a buzzword rather than a genuine commitment to environmental and social responsibility. This study adopts a qualitative approach, utilizing 12 companies represented by an employee with sustainability responsibility. The research has been conducted through semi-structured interviews, aiming to provide comprehensive insights for the research. Subsequently, thematic analysis is applied to identify recurring themes and patterns in the data. Our analysis reveals that sustainability is distributed in various ways inside companies, and the interviewed companies are trying to motivate their employees in various initiatives. Our data addresses this through; renewing the strategy, making it more tangible and close in time, providing substance to terminology, breaking down goals and utilizing communication. These themes are primarily analyzed in the context of the Construal-Level Theory of Psychological Distance (CLT) by Trope and Liberman (2010), along with perspectives on other theories such as theories surrounding pro-environmental behavior and employee green initiatives, extended with attention towards communication; visions, narratives and framing. Drawing from these findings, implications and suggestions for future research are presented