Internal communication for sustainability. Expanding corporate sustainability communication with the inner development goals (IDGs)

Purpose The article at hand expands a recently published conceptual framework to understand sustainable corporate communication as “communicative niche construction”. There, the transformative and transformational potential of corporate communication is discussed, looking at the interaction between an organization and its external environment. Here, we follow the call to explore internal relationship building and its potential to cultivate sustainability from within an organization as a normative compass for corporate communication. Design/methodology/approach The article connects the concept of “cultivation of sustainability” with perspectives from internal communication to then put the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and, correspondingly, the so-called inner development goals (IDGs) to the acid test with 10 explorative expert interviews with internal communication and sustainability communication professionals conducted in 2024. Findings The IDGs aim to guide sustainable relationship-building within organizations and to re-focus on organizational transformation, especially in times of external pressure, an increasing density of regulations and policies and the realization that reaching the SDGs has moved into the far distance. However, communication is only mentioned as skill and not seen as a relation-building, engaging and empowering process. In addition, the IDGs are not very specific in terms of the people who implement them and the ones who are responsible for their institutionalization. The responsibility to transform is mostly allocated on an individual level, and there is a lack of specific topics and issues as well as space for internal communication and value negotiations. Originality/value The IDGs trigger a critical reflection of sustainability communication and demand to shift the perspective from an external to an internal communication environment and further theorize and learn from frameworks invented, designed and applied “only” in organizational practice. Despite the limitations of the study, mainly the small number of practical insights, the article highlights that sustainability as a normative guidepost can – and should – be communicatively cultivated from within organizations, teams, communities, any form of tribes or through interpersonal relationships, which stimulates future empirical research in corporate sustainability communication.