The ideology of economic growth and the business discourse of sustainable development

Abstract

This study investigates the way the growth ideology deals with the contradictions of sustainable development discourse. Reports from newspapers were analyzed, which linked state-owned companies and companies of mixed economy operating in the business of electricity generation and listed in the ISE BM&FBOVESPA to the dimensions of sustainable development of the Triple Bottom Line (3BL). Also, the sustainability reports of those companies were analyzed. The data collected is dated from 2005 to 2013. The media reports underwent content analysis aiming to find reported facts that linked those enterprises to the sustainable development themes. The reports of sustainability underwent discourse analysis with the purpose of identifying ideological demonstrations in the sustainability discourse. Using Giddens’s (1979) conceptualization of ‘ideology’, the results indicated that the growth ideology components are transferred to the discourse of sustainable development through euphemisms and semantic slips. This allows companies to take advantage of the polysemous properties of language to re-signify them by (i) the reification of the present; (ii) the defense of growth as if it were of primary collective interest, and (iii) the denial of contradictions, evidenced by conflicts between the environmental, economic and social dimensions of the Triple Bottom Line concept.

Keywords:
Economic Growth; Sustainable Development; Discourse; Ideology