The concept of sustainable development has become pre-eminent in the discussions on the relationship between humankind and nature. However, it has often been noted that there appears to be no common understanding either on the definition of sustainable development or on the possible measures needed to be taken in order to achieve it.

Although sustainable development also has older roots, it is usually assumed to have originated in the Brundtland Report Our Common Future by the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development of 1987. In the report, sustainable development was defined as “development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Thereafter, the concept has gained widespread support as an appropriate policy goal for humankind. There seems to be some kind of consensus that the present way of living is not sustainable. Hajer (1997, pp. 13, 14) maintains that “environmental conflict is no longer about whether there is a crisis, it’s essentially about its interpretation.” Accordingly, there is an ongoing debate about how seriously unsustainable the current social practices are and what kind of measures should be taken in order to achieve sustainable development.

The role of the companies in achieving sustainable development has been a subject of lively discussion over the last decade, and the considerable increase in the quantity of corporate disclosures relating to environmental and social issues is well documented in the literature. However, there have been recent calls to move beyond descriptive research towards studies which would create a more qualitative understanding of what the reports are actually saying. In another context, Bebbington (2001, p. 129) has noted that the concept of sustainable development has been used to mean “different things to different people in different contexts”. It has also been pointed out that business managers do not have a clear understanding of what sustainable development is about. This paper therefore aims to shed more light on how the concept of sustainable development is used in the business context by analysing how it is constructed in the disclosures of Finnish listed companies. This study extends the ideas of Springett, 2003a and Springett, 2003b, Bebbington (2001), Fineman (2001), Gray and Bebbington (2000), and Bebbington and Thomson (1996) by making business actors’ conceptions of sustainable development visible. It seeks to contribute by providing a further understanding of what corporations are actually saying in their disclosures on sustainable development thereby adding to a recent stream of research employing discourse analysis and other interpretive analytical approaches to deconstruct business interpretations of sustainable development.

The analysis commences with summaries of earlier literature on the various discourses of sustainable development and of the previous findings of how business conceptualises sustainable development. Next, the approach, method of analysis and the dataset are presented, followed by an analysis of the Finnish disclosures. Finally, the findings are discussed and some concluding remarks are made.

In the Brundtland Report, sustainable development was defined very loosely, and since that report, hosts of different definitions for the concept have emerged. This elusiveness has helped the concept to gain a predominant position in environmental and social discussions worldwide, as it has been possible to define the concept to suit one’s own purposes. Sustainable development has therefore increasingly been used to promote very different kinds of initiatives in different contexts. As the use of these sustainability-related phrases has become more and more widespread, their meanings and internal relations have tended to become increasingly blurry. The discussion around different definitions and wider interpretations of sustainable development is often simplified into a dichotomy, in which two broader, relatively discrete social discourses are present. These ideal types of environmental or sustainability views have been given various labels, such as ‘reformists’ and ‘radicals’; ‘technocentrics’ and ‘ecocentrics’, ‘business view’ and ‘public view’ on sustainability, ‘light (shallow) green’ and ‘deep green’, and ‘weak sustainability’ and ‘strong sustainability’. In this study, they will be referred to as ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ sustainability. These two distinct approaches to sustainability present different ideas on how severe the current environmental crisis actually is, how threatening it is to humankind and nature as a whole, and how society should react to these issues. Next, the differences will be discussed in more detail.

In weak sustainability environmental and social problems are perceived to be less severe than in the strong view. The issues are acknowledged, but they are not believed to cause fundamental problems to the continuity of human progress. Accordingly, it is assumed that society can solve the ecological crisis by addressing it within the current social structures and economic institutions. No radical paradigm shift is deemed necessary. Solutions will be found through learning and by developing the existing practices, e.g. market mechanisms. On the whole, a sustainable society is considered to be relatively easily achievable within a relatively short timeframe.

In weak sustainability, the prevailing way of living is mainly left unquestioned. Economic progress and further growth continue to be dominant goals of society, upon which other dimensions of sustainability are partly dependent. Sustainable development is presented as a sort of a holy grail, which will simultaneously endow society with further economic growth, environmental protection and social improvements, with little or no trade-offs. Nature is seen as manageable through science and technology and the relationship of humankind to nature is rather instrumental: nature provides society with resources which can be utilised to increase human welfare.

The critics of this weak sustainability are various. Most importantly, in strong sustainability it is argued that continuous growth is impossible and may need to be abandoned as a dominant goal. Economic growth is considered to be a major cause of the social and environmental problems and pursuing it any further will severely hinder society’s chances of achieving sustainable development.

Strong sustainability emphasises that humans are an integral part of nature. In contrast to the anthropocentric perspective of the weak view, strong sustainability often approaches sustainability from an ecocentric viewpoint, placing the biosphere as a whole at the centre of the analysis. Humankind should not attempt to manage nature, but try to live in harmony with the other species and the ecosystem in general. Furthermore, in contrast to the weak view, strong sustainability regards social aspects as being an integral part of sustainable development, and considers both intragenerational and intergenerational equity as important issues. On the whole, the social and environmental problems are deemed more structural, therefore requiring radical solutions. It is emphasised that the environmental and social problems we face today are due to the prevailing economic system, which must therefore be restructured in a major way.