Sustainability in the context of the UK pharmaceutical industry (2000-2020): Media representations and stakeholder perceptions

Corporate sustainability requires clear and efficient communication between companies and their stakeholders. For some companies and sectors, it is difficult to establish this line of communication because of structural obstacles and sector-related detachment, which results in ambiguity about their sustainability credo. In such cases, social evaluators take on the role of disseminating and evaluating corporate sustainability. This research proposes a qualitative, longitudinal study in such context (pharmaceutical industry in the UK), first to examine how social evaluation and the engagement of social influencers play out in the setting of joint multi-stakeholders sustainability projects, and then to examine how the ultimate agents of social evaluation and influence (the mainstream media) frame the corporate sustainability discourse, thus shaping the public opinion about the corporate sustainability of the sector. The research is divided into three separate but related studies and it found that in sustainability projects success depends on the right choice of engaged social influencers, their personal characteristics and motivation, but also on contextual circumstances and the ability to advertise the project via media and other outlets. As for media framing, the overall media interest in sectoral sustainability grew over time and it was generally evaluated positively. Rather than on environmental issues, the media focused on core sectoral characteristics, its significance and the importance of their product, on cooperation and collaboration and on the role of the executives in sustainable transformation. As for dominant storylines, the media highlighted the dominance of business logic on one side and the sense of moral superiority on the other as barriers to meaningful communication and cooperation, and on the necessity of the media to act as honest brokers and facilitate the rapprochement between the sector and the stakeholders.