Call for Panel Participants:  Business Practices Themed Panel 
ABC 2018 International Conference, Miami, FL

The ABC Business Practices Committee is inviting presentations for the theme:

The Rhetoric of Sustainability

For-profit and nonprofit organizations, governments, and other institutions employ words, graphics, videos, and physical artifacts to persuade viewers and readers to adopt behaviors or accept ideas relevant to environmental sustainability practices.  There are many examples of this “rhetoric of sustainability”:

  • Internal corporate communications to employees concerning the organization’s commitment to environmental sustainability
  • Corporate public relations communications to media, activists, regulators, or shareholders regarding sustainability
  • Taglines encouraging environmentally friendly practices (e.g., “Green Living Promises Longer Life,” “Love Your Kids And Go Green”)
  • Written reminders, posted on walls and hallways, to conserve water and electricity and to recycle packaging materials
  • Electronic messages at ATM machines requesting customers to refrain from printing transaction records as an environmentally friendly act
  • Wall art, including large plantings of flowers and grasses, intended to persuade viewers that corporations support sustainability initiatives
  • Labels and graphics on recycling bins

 

As indicated by these examples, the rhetoric may serve multiple purposes and is occasionally ambiguous.  When, for instance, a hotel requests guests to consider carefully the need for daily clean towels or linens, is the hotel management seeking to preserve the environment or to reduce laundering costs?  Is the term “clean coal” a disingenuous claim that use of carbon-based fuels is, in fact, consistent with a sustainable environment?

Presentations for this themed Business Practices panel will analyze the structures and intent of these types of rhetorical claims.  Case studies, historical analyses, ethnographic treatments, rhetorical and discourse analyses, quantitative studies, or other appropriate research methodologies are acceptable.

 

To be considered for this panel, please submit an abstract (approximately 500 – 750 words) to the Business Practices Committee Chair, Sam DeKay, at shdekay@earthlink.net   Abstracts are due by April 30, 2018. 

 

Three presentations will be selected for this Business Practices panel.  In the event you are not selected for the panel, but wish to be considered for a regular or poster session at the conference, please also submit directly to the ABC Miami conference following their submission guidelines.  If you choose this simultaneous submission, at the bottom of your Miami regular or poster session submission, note:  THIS ABSTRACT WAS ALSO SUBMITTED TO BUSINESS PRACTICES PANEL.