| Summary: | Many firms struggle to incorporate "sustainability" into their operations in a way that can capture economic value and deliver social and environmental benefits. This article aims to answer two questions in this regard: (i) How do companies articulate the sustainability aspects of their businesses online, and (ii) In what ways does the degree of articulation of specific sustainability aspects relate to company performance metrics, such as sales and R&D expenditure. The research method measures the occurrences of a set of sustainability-related keywords on the websites of a sample of 387 firms that were ranked as top R&D spenders in Europe for 2013. We processed the keyword occurrences in a simplified version of latent semantic analysis based on the application of principal component analysis to identify the specific combinations of words used by companies to communicate sustainability issues on their websites. The results show that "sustainable innovation" and "sustainable operations" based on partnerships and cooperation represent a dominant part of companies' online communication strategies. One of the findings suggests a strong relationship between the communication of sustainable innovation aspects and sales, which offers a promising message to companies looking for evidence about the potential impact of their commitment to sustainable operations and innovation.
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