Social sustainability in an evolving circular fashion industry: identifying and triangulating concepts across different publication groups

Soziale Nachhaltigkeit in einer sich entwickelnden zirkulären Mode- und Bekleidungsindustrie: Identifikation und Triangulation von Konzepten verschiedener Publikationsgruppen

Katja Beyer () and Marlen Gabriele Arnold ()
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Katja Beyer: Technische Universität Chemnitz
Marlen Gabriele Arnold: Technische Universität Chemnitz

Sustainability Nexus Forum, 2022, vol. 30, issue 1, No 3, 29-54

Abstract: Abstract Sustainability and the concept of circular economy are two of the most prominent approaches in the fashion industry to meet global challenges. Advocated by different interest groups, these concepts primarily follow an environmental and economic perspective on sustainability. In turn, the social dimension of sustainability has not been extensively explored. Performing a comparative discourse analysis, this study triangulates data from three different perspectives and unveils social sustainability-related aspects in documents related to two specific companies as well as in academic and stakeholder publications in the fashion context. We use LeximancerTM to reveal and visualize the scope and frequency of socially relevant concepts in more than 550 publications. Based on this, results show that the two fashion companies have gradually been communicating more about social sustainability-related aspects as opposed to academic and stakeholder publications. Overall, single social sustainability-related values exclusively appear in each of the publication groups, whereas others seem to reflect a mutual influence among the different players. Yet, pivotal social sustainability-related issues are missing. This corroborates scholars assuming a neglected role of the social dimension of sustainability in general and calling for a greater elaboration on social aspects in the conceptualization of a circular economy. Our results also call for a deeper follow-up analysis of communications, practices and strategies of different actors in their respective social contexts.

Keywords: Circular economy; Content analysis; Fashion industry; Themes and verbal patterns; Social sustainability; Triangulation; Kreislaufwirtschaft; Inhaltsanalyse; Mode- und Bekleidungsindustrie; Themen und sprachliche Muster; Soziale Nachhaltigkeit; Triangulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1007/s00550-022-00527-x

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