Emplotting Climate Change: Rhetorical History and Imagined Accountability

Abstract

This theory paper addresses the question of how firms use rhetorical history in seeking to manage stakeholder expectations regarding their responses to climate change. We draw on the strategic potential of rhetorical history and explore how its emplotment generates social imaginaries that lend rhetorical history more persuasiveness. To elucidate this, we introduce a typology of social imaginaries—warned, glorified, awakened, and redeemed—each representing a distinct strategy through which fossil-fuel firms present and justify their climate actions. We examine why such persuasiveness matters by exploring the consequences of these imaginaries in manipulating corporate accountability. Specifically, we propose that accountability manipulation can occur in four ways: deviated accountability, delayed accountability, decoupled accountability, and dyschromic accountability. This paper contributes to the limited understanding of the dark sides of rhetorical history by demonstrating a formation process of such dark sides and its consequences. We also contribute to the broader discussion on corporate engagement with grand challenges by showing how firms can use rhetorical history to influence stakeholder expectations and corporate accountability in responding to societal issues. To further insights into corporate accountability and its manipulation, we offer policy and managerial implications for developing strategies to operate in an increasingly politically polarized world.