IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/bstrat/v34y2025i3p2863-2881.html

The Legitimacy–Commitment Paradox in Corporate Sustainability Strategy Formulation

Author

Listed:
  • Rikke Rønholt Albertsen

Abstract

Researchers have long problematised the gap between corporations' formulated sustainability strategies and their actual contributions to sustainability. This study draws on 24 months of real‐time observations in a multinational company to explore the origins of this gap in the formulation phase of corporate sustainability (CS) strategy. The findings show that contradictory logics and processes related to (a) gaining external legitimacy and (b) mobilising internal commitment impose paradoxical demands on the formulation process. Strategy makers tackled these tensions through rhetorical ambiguity and temporal separation. However, while these paradox management strategies facilitated coping with conflicting demands and avoiding deadlocks in the formulation process, they also created a commitment vacuum that undermined implementation. This study highlights the role of the formulation phase as an overlooked origin of implementation failure. The findings nuance our understanding of defensive and proactive paradox responses and call for further examination of the unintended outcomes of paradox responses.

Suggested Citation

  • Rikke Rønholt Albertsen, 2025. "The Legitimacy–Commitment Paradox in Corporate Sustainability Strategy Formulation," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(3), pages 2863-2881, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:bstrat:v:34:y:2025:i:3:p:2863-2881
    DOI: 10.1002/bse.4131
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.4131
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/bse.4131?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Simone Carmine & Valentina De Marchi, 2023. "Reviewing Paradox Theory in Corporate Sustainability Toward a Systems Perspective," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 184(1), pages 139-158, April.
    2. Lalaounis, Sotiris T. & Nayak, Ajit, 2022. "Dynamic stability: Unfolding dynamics of vicious cycles in a design firm," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 137-150.
    3. Kirsti Iivonen, 2018. "Defensive Responses to Strategic Sustainability Paradoxes: Have Your Coke and Drink It Too!," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 148(2), pages 309-327, March.
    4. Margarida Rodrigues & Mário Franco, 2019. "The Corporate Sustainability Strategy in Organisations: A Systematic Review and Future Directions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(22), pages 1-22, November.
    5. Banerjee, Subhabrata Bobby, 2002. "Corporate environmentalism: the construct and its measurement," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 55(3), pages 177-191, March.
    6. Tobias Hahn & Jonatan Pinkse & Lutz Preuss & Frank Figge, 2015. "Tensions in Corporate Sustainability: Towards an Integrative Framework," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 127(2), pages 297-316, March.
    7. Matthew A. Douglas & Diane A. Mollenkopf & Vincent E. Castillo & John E. Bell & Emily C. Dickey, 2022. "Journeys, Not Destinations: Theorizing a Process View of Supply Chain Integrity," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 181(1), pages 195-220, November.
    8. Shabana Talpur & Muhammad Nadeem & Helen Roberts, 2023. "Corporate social responsibility decoupling: a systematic literature review and future research agenda," Journal of Applied Accounting Research, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 25(4), pages 878-909, January.
    9. Chahrazad Abdallah & Ann Langley, 2014. "The Double Edge of Ambiguity in Strategic Planning," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(2), pages 235-264, March.
    10. Andreas Georg Scherer & Guido Palazzo & David Seidl, 2013. "Managing Legitimacy in Complex and Heterogeneous Environments: Sustainable Development in a Globalized World," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(2), pages 259-284, March.
    11. Jijun Gao & Pratima Bansal, 2013. "Instrumental and Integrative Logics in Business Sustainability," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 112(2), pages 241-255, January.
    12. Heidi Rapp Nilsen, 2024. "Code Red for Humanity: The Role of Business Ethics as We Transgress Planetary Thresholds," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 189(1), pages 1-7, January.
    13. Jonathan Schad & Pratima Bansal, 2018. "Seeing the Forest and the Trees: How a Systems Perspective Informs Paradox Research," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(8), pages 1490-1506, December.
    14. Dorothee Baumann-Pauly & Andreas Georg Scherer & Guido Palazzo, 2016. "Managing Institutional Complexity: A Longitudinal Study of Legitimacy Strategies at a Sportswear Brand Company," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 137(1), pages 31-51, August.
    15. John Sillince & Paula Jarzabkowski & Duncan Shaw, 2012. "Shaping Strategic Action Through the Rhetorical Construction and Exploitation of Ambiguity," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 23(3), pages 630-650, June.
    16. Rasche, Andreas & Seidl, David, 2020. "A Luhmannian perspective on strategy: Strategy as paradox and meta-communication," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    17. Friederike Neugebauer & Frank Figge & Tobias Hahn, 2016. "Planned or Emergent Strategy Making? Exploring the Formation of Corporate Sustainability Strategies," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(5), pages 323-336, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Roth, Steffen & Sales, Augusto & Valentinov, Vladislav, 2025. "Value plurality and multifunctional commensuration in organisation: A systems‐theoretical approach," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 42(2), pages 553-562.
    2. Riikka Tapaninaho, 2025. "Examining the competing demands of business and sustainability: What do corporate sustainability discourses reveal?," Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 34(4), pages 1278-1299, October.
    3. Ologeanu-Taddei, Roxana & Hönigsberg, Sarah & Weritz, Pauline & Wache, Hendrik & Mittermeier, Ferdinand & Tana, Silviana & Dang, Duong & Hautala-Kankaanpää, Tuire & Pekkola, Samuli, 2025. "The relationship of digital transformation and corporate sustainability: Synergies and tensions," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 210(C).
    4. Tobias Hahn & Frank Figge, 2018. "Why Architecture Does Not Matter: On the Fallacy of Sustainability Balanced Scorecards," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 150(4), pages 919-935, July.
    5. Simone Carmine & Valentina De Marchi, 2023. "Reviewing Paradox Theory in Corporate Sustainability Toward a Systems Perspective," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 184(1), pages 139-158, April.
    6. Jay Joseph & Helen Borland & Marc Orlitzky & Adam Lindgreen, 2020. "Seeing Versus Doing: How Businesses Manage Tensions in Pursuit of Sustainability," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 164(2), pages 349-370, June.
    7. Zhang, Yan & Han, Yu-Lan, 2019. "Paradoxical leader behavior in long-term corporate development: Antecedents and consequences," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 42-54.
    8. Sarah Birrell Ivory & Simon Bentley Brooks, 2018. "Managing Corporate Sustainability with a Paradoxical Lens: Lessons from Strategic Agility," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 148(2), pages 347-361, March.
    9. Tobias Hahn & Frank Figge & Jonatan Pinkse & Lutz Preuss, 2018. "A Paradox Perspective on Corporate Sustainability: Descriptive, Instrumental, and Normative Aspects," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 148(2), pages 235-248, March.
    10. Shu, Ei (Emily), 2022. "Paradoxical framing and coping process on sustainable new product development," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    11. Karen LaPierre & Naomi Wakayama & Toshiro Wakayama, 2016. "Creating Shared Value In The Presence Of Conflicts And Tradeoffs: A Paradox Perspective On Business And Society," Working Papers EMS_2016_11, Research Institute, International University of Japan.
    12. Julia Benkert, 2021. "Reframing Business Sustainability Decision-Making with Value-Focussed Thinking," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 174(2), pages 441-456, November.
    13. Janina Grabs & Rachael D. Garrett, 2023. "Goal-Based Private Sustainability Governance and Its Paradoxes in the Indonesian Palm Oil Sector," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 188(3), pages 467-507, December.
    14. Anna Katharina Provasnek & Erwin Schmid & Bernhard Geissler & Gerald Steiner, 2017. "Sustainable Corporate Entrepreneurship: Performance and Strategies Toward Innovation," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(4), pages 521-535, May.
    15. Jaakko Siltaloppi & Risto Rajala & Henri Hietala, 2021. "Integrating CSR with Business Strategy: A Tension Management Perspective," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 174(3), pages 507-527, December.
    16. Hanna Ahlström & Amanda Williams & Emmy Wassénius & Andrea S. Downing, 2025. "Deepening the Conversation on Systemic Sustainability Risks: A Social-Ecological Systems Approach," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 199(3), pages 495-506, July.
    17. Sitong (Michelle) Chen & Gabriel Eweje, 2022. "Managing tensions in sustainable development in Chinese and New Zealand business partnerships: Integrative approaches," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(5), pages 2568-2587, July.
    18. Kainiemi, Laura & Laukkanen, Minttu & Levänen, Jarkko, 2025. "Multi-sectoral interactions in energy transition: Unveiling tensions between sustainability and justice," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 384(C).
    19. Aymen Sajjad & Gabriel Eweje & Muhammad Mustafa Raziq, 2024. "Sustainability leadership: An integrative review and conceptual synthesis," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(4), pages 2849-2867, May.
    20. Annika Mies & Tim Gruchmann & Stefan Gold, 2026. "Conceptualising the Socio-material Context: An Ethical Enquiry into the Contextual Materialisation of Paradoxes in Transport Logistics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 203(1), pages 107-139, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:bstrat:v:34:y:2025:i:3:p:2863-2881. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1099-0836 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.