Talking the Walk: ESG Discourse as Strategic Dynamic Capability

Conventional wisdom suggests that firms must “walk the talk” on sustainability. In turbulent institutional environments, however, talking increasingly becomes part of the walk, as organizations use sustainability discourse to construct and maintain legitimacy. Drawing on the dynamic capabilities framework and on communication-centred perspectives on organizing, legitimation, and CSR communication, this study conceptualizes ESG discourse as a discursive dynamic capability: the learned, patterned capacity of an organization to purposefully adapt its communicative routines (thematic emphasis, narrative framing, and platform deployment) in response to shifting institutional and stakeholder expectations. Because dynamic capabilities cannot be observed directly, we derive three observable manifestations through which such a capability should leave empirical traces: materiality-aligned content emphasis (sensing), platform-tailored framing (seizing), and routinized thematic consistency (transforming). Our hypotheses test these manifestations and their configurational alignment. Using a dataset of 10,690 ESG-validated social media messages posted between 2021 and 2023 by 23 major European Utilities and Technology firms, the analysis reveals three main patterns: governance discourse emerges as a low-volume yet structurally consistent communicative routine across sectors; environmental narratives generate significantly higher engagement in risk-exposed Utilities firms; and digital platforms impose distinct legitimacy logics, with Facebook favoring participatory resonance and Twitter/X enabling selective signaling. Crucially, engagement is highest when ESG content is aligned simultaneously with sectoral materiality and platform affordances, supporting the Platform–Materiality Matrix and the adaptive-fit logic that underpins it. Taken together, the findings provide systematic evidence of the discursive patterns that a discursive dynamic capability would be expected to produce, even though the capability itself remains an inferred rather than directly observed construct. By conceptualizing ESG discourse as a discursive dynamic capability, this study contributes to research on strategic communication, sustainability disclosure, and the role of digital platforms in shaping organizational legitimacy.