H&Ms sustainability strategies

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2022-07-14

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en

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H&M is being accused of greenwashing practices, whereby it would maximize its green image without trying to minimize its climate impact. However, greenwashing is only one of the many strategies organizations can simultaneously have towards institutional sustainability pressures. Research that focuses on H&Ms complete picture of strategies towards the institutional sustainability pressures is lacking. Therefore, this research is aimed at answering the following research question: What are H&Ms strategies towards institutional sustainability pressures? This research is aimed at answering this question by means of a case study of H&M in which content analysis is used to analyze H&Ms sustainability reports, news articles and videos related to their sustainability strategies from 2011 onwards. It seems from the analysis that H&M makes use of various strategies towards institutional sustainability, including the overall strategies of ‘compliance’, ‘avoidance’ and ‘influence’. Moreover, H&M makes use of various neutralization techniques, including the overall techniques ‘unavoidable’, ‘good intentions’ and ‘transfer of responsibilities’. The findings show that H&M indeed makes use of greenwashing behavior, reflected by the conceal strategy. However, this research also shows that H&M actually takes a lot of sustainable actions and makes use of a lot more strategies than just the conceal strategy.

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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen