HCII 2023 Copenhagen, Denmark, July 23–28
Communicating Sustainability Online: A Soft Systems Methodology and Corpus Linguistics Approach in the Example of Norwegian Seafood Companies

Human Computer Interaction (HCI) in Business, Government and Organizations, 10th International Conference, HCIBGO 2023, Held as Part of the 25th HCI International Conference, HCI International 2023, Copenhagen, Denmark, July 23–28, 2023, Proceedings, Part II Conference proceedings 2023.

Abstract

This article presents a qualitative case study of the Norwegian seafood industry’s sustainability communication on corporate websites. The research questions focused on how sustainability is communicated, and the communication channels employed by Norwegian seafood companies. The study found that sustainability is communicated through ecological certification, awareness towards the environment and social compliance, and engagement in knowledge exchange. The study highlights the need to create standardized language and a coherent discourse for competitive advantages in ecologically value-added products and digital services. Companies can use underutilized digital resources such as podcasts and direct online sales to consumers to improve stakeholder engagement. The study suggests the direct and active involvement of consumers in designing products that consumers desire, which can increase market share for the Norwegian seafood industry. The limitations of the study are the lack of feedback from small to medium-sized companies, limiting the generalizability of the findings. The study recommends that the Norwegian seafood industry supports developing digital service resources for small and medium-sized companies to remain competitive in the long term.

Keywords

sustainability, corporate online communication, seafood, soft systems methodology, corpus linguistics

Cite as:
Lindström, N.B., Cordeiro, C.M. (2023). Communicating Sustainability Online: A Soft Systems Methodology and Corpus Linguistics Approach in the Example of Norwegian Seafood Companies. In: Nah, F., Siau, K. (eds) HCI in Business, Government and Organizations. HCII 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14039. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36049-7_25

Vertical farms and the complex relationships between energy use in food systems, food production and energy resource constraints

From 2016, standing in a group discussion with Jack Ng, who is an engineer, and the Founder of Sky Greens Singapore. Sky Greens was founded in 2012.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson & CM Cordeiro 2021

The current Horizon Europe Work Programme 2021-2022 for Food, Bioeconomy Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment [1] acknowledges a need to address the complex relationships between energy use in food systems, food system productivity and energy resource constraints. Product type, mode of transport, food waste, energy-related food system greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and energy efficiencies in geographies of production along with economies of scale are some of the interacting variables in the food-energy network [2,3]

In Sweden, about 26% of the greenhouse gases emitted come from agricultural activities [2]. Traditional farming practices and food production techniques concurrent with urbanization and globalization are energy intensive. With concurrent urbanization, globalization and changes in demography, the importance of energy use in food systems has become a global food security concern [3], particularly when some studies have shown that crop yields increase in close association with energy inputs [4].

The European regional concerns reminded me of a visit to Sky Greens in Singapore in 2016. I was in Singapore to attend the Responsible Business Forum conference held at Marina Bay Sands, and I had the opportunity too at the time, to visit the world´s first low carbon, hydraulic driven vertical vegetable farm and meet its Founder, Jack Ng.

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Seagriculture 2019 “Seaweed Success Stories”

Mussel served with seaweed pesto and a side of Arame seaweed, by pioneering Seaweed chef Donald Deschagt, Ostend, Belgium for Seagriculture 2019 dinner. The following article also appears on Forskning.no, Fra Fjord til bord.
Text & Photo © JW van Hal, JE Nilsson & CM Cordeiro 2019

An impromptu session of new product testing with a group of friends in northern Norway ensued after I returned from a seaweed trade fair with new product samples of chocolate infused with seaweed or chocolate seaweed. I grew up in Singapore, and one of my first encounters at age of about five with seaweed was at a cousin´s wedding dinner. Seaweed is often served in conjunction with jellyfish at Chinese wedding banquets as cold dish appetizers. As such, I had taken for granted that the chocolate seaweed samples would bring positive reviews with thereafter queries of where to purchase such chocolate bars or when do we see them at the local grocery stores in Tromsø. But the immediate reactions to the chocolate seaweed was tepid at best. Most concluded that chocolate infused with seaweed was not a palatable product, and that a perfectly good product like chocolate was ruined.

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Torskefiskkonferansen 2019 Tromsø, Norway

Geir Sogn-Grundvåg [1], Senior Researcher at Nofima, and keynote speaker at Torskefiskkonferansen 2019, Clarion Hotel, The Edge, Tromsø, Norway.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson & CM Cordeiro 2019

Hosted by the Norwegian Seafood Council [2], Torskefiskkonferanse 2019 took place on 10 October 2019, in Tromsø at Clarion Hotel, The Edge. The event saw a convening of more than 400 participants from various industry sectors, as well as academia and research. This one-day event is an excellent arena for the exchange of knowledge and for networking purposes.

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26-28 Jun. EURAM 2019 Conference, Lisbon, Portugal

Paper presentation at EURAM 2019, SIG12 Research Methods and Research Practice at ISCTE – Lisbon University Institute, Lisbon, Portugal.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson & CM Cordeiro 2019

The annual conference for the European Academy of Management, EURAM 2019, took place between 26 to 28 June in the beautiful historic city of Lisbon in Portugal. EURAM was founded in 2001 and today has members from more than 49 countries around the globe. This year’s theme, “Exploring the future of management” [EURAM 2019 Conference Program PDF] saw a high degree of involvement with more than 1700 paper submissions on a variety of management themes that were organized in 14 Special Interest Groups (SIGs).

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Torskefiskkonferansen 2018 Tromsø, Norway

At Torskefiskkonferansen 2018, I had the opportunity to meet and speak with Jarle Aarbakke, Norwegian politician with the Labour Party and current Deputy Mayor of Tromsø. He is also Professor Emeritus in Pharmacology (Medicine) at the Department of Medical Biology at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Tromsø (UiT) and formerly served as Chancellor of UiT and the Higher Education Council. Mayor Jarle Aarbakke opened Torskefiskkonferansen 2018 with a Welcome Speech.
Text & Photo © CM Cordeiro 2018

Hosted by the Norwegian Seafood Council [1] who has its headquarters in the city known as Paris of the North, Torskefiskkonferansen 2018 was held in Tromsø, Norway, on Thursday, 18 Oct. 2018 at Clarion Hotel, The Edge. An important annual event for the cod fish industry sector of Norway, this year’s working theme for the conference was “Torskefisk (Cod Fish) goes global!”. The purpose of the event was to provide a platform for the industry as well as academics to exchange knowledge and views on the continued development of the Norwegian cod fish industry and its position in global markets.

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The 28th annual RESER (European Association for REsearch on SERvices) 2018 conference dinner, Gothenburg, Sweden

At Skansen Kronan for the RESER 2018 conference dinner.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2018

The 28th annual RESER (European Association for REsearch on SERvices) conference took place this year from 20 to 22 Sep. in Gothenburg, Sweden. We had a total of 87 registered participants with some colleagues flying in from as far as China and Japan. This year, the conference was jointly hosted by The School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg (HGU), and Chalmers University of Technology.

The RESER conferences of 2010 and 2018 are special for me because the events seem to nicely bracket my career at HGU. My role at HGU spanned between executive management and research, where I began by being part of the RESER 2010 conference organizing and scientific committee. I find it surreal that organizing RESER 2018 and meeting with RESER colleagues is also one of the last memories that I bring with me about the Business School before moving on to join Nofima, the Norwegian Institute of Food, Fisheries and Aquaculture Research as Market Scientist at the Centre for Marketing Research located at its headquarters in Tromsø, Norway.

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The 9th International Research Meeting in Business and Management, IRMBAM-2018, Nice, France

At the 9th International Research Meeting in Business and Management (IRMBAM-2018) conference held at the IPAG Business School in Nice, France from 5 to 7 July 2018.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2018

The annual 9th International Research Meeting in Business and Management (IRMBAM-2018) was held from 5 to 7 of July in the beautiful French Riviera city of Nice. The conference was jointly organized by an international coalition of the IPAG Business School of France, South Champagne Business School of France, the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa, Canada, the University of Bern of Switzerland, and University of Nice Sophia Antipolis of France. The conference had 15 tracks covering a broad range of topics in economics, management and international business. Notable keynote speakers to this year’s conference in the field of management and entrepreneurship include, Professor David Allen from Neeley School of Business at the Texas Christian University located in Forth Worth, Texas, USA, and Professor Shaker Zahra from the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, USA.

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Conference on Global Production (CGP) 2017, Singapore: Towards an integrated scientific knowledge paradigm

Jubilee Bridge cityscape, Singapore.
The 6-8 Dec. 2017 Global Production Networks (GPN) conference was held in Singapore, hosted by the National University of Singapore.

Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2017

Launched in Jan. 2015, the Global Production Networks Centre at the National University of Singapore (NUS) is home to a new research initiative that studies the role of global production networks (GPNs) in the development of Asia. Due to the comprehensive and complex nature of GPN studies, the centre hosts scholars from various cognate disciplines, some of which include sociology, economics, international business, human-economic geography and social psychology in view of cultivating an integral perspective to the GPN field of study. Rather than a more traditional double-blind peer review system to the submission of conference papers, the purpose of the Conference on Global Production (CGP) 2017, held between 6-8 Dec., was to facilitate network sessions and exchange of ideas of like minded individuals interested in GPN and global value chain (GVC) research.

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The 27th annual RESER (European Association for REsearch on SERvices) Conference 2017, Bilbao, Spain

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The 27th annual RESER (European Association for REsearch on SERvices) conference was held from 7 to 9 September in Bilbao, Spain.
Text & Photo © J. Bröchner, JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2017

The theme for this year’s 27th RESER conference on service research is the crucial role of services in business and cities competitiveness. The conference was held between 7 to 9 September 2017 at the Euskalduna Conference Centre, hosted in collaboration with Mondragon Univeristy of the Mondragon Corporation in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain. The core theme was structured around 7 topics: city service, servitization, service ecosystems, service innovation and international perspectives, value creation and methodological challenges in service studies. A core value of RESER conferences, that could also be observed in this context, is to encourage interdisciplinary perspectives and interaction of scholars across disciplines in order to address complexity. It is always this element of the plurality of perspectives that I enjoy most when meeting with the RESER community of practitioners and scholars. There were 104 listed participants for presentation over three parallel sessions. Four social events were scheduled, one per day beginning 6 September with the doctoral colloquium meet and concluding with an interesting tour of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. The conference days pendulumed between rain and sunshine. On the evening of the gala dinner however, conference participants were treated to a spectacular 360 degrees view of the city of Bilbao from Torre Iberdrola, located on the 24th floor of the Iberdrola Tower. RESER 2018 is set to be held from 20-22 September 2018 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

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