The Contextualist Strategy

I propose that one prominent way theorists have managed the current (conceptual) state of affairs is by subscribing to the contextualist position developed in the literature concerning the task of conceptualizing corporate sustainability. In brief, the contextualist strategy claims that the meanings of the term “corporate sustainability”—and, crucially, the (normative) requirements they express—can only be understood contextually (see, for instance, Hahn et al., Reference Hahn, Pinkse, Preuss and Figge2015; Moon et al., Reference Moon, Murphy, Gond, Rasche, Morsing, Moon and Kourula2023; Rasche et al., Reference Rasche, Morsing, Moon, Kourula, Rasche, Morsing, Moon and Kourula2023; Sharma, Reference Sharma2014; Van Marrewijk, Reference Van Marrewijk2003; Van Marrewijk & Werre, Reference Van Marrewijk and Werre2003). Accordingly, on this view, the meaning of the term “corporate sustainability” is therefore always indexed to a particular context. Consequently, the notion of corporate sustainability only exhibits a clear meaning when it is used in actual discourse about concrete issues, challenges, and pressures that are faced by particular business organizations, industries, and/or societies.

Van Marrewijk (Reference Van Marrewijk2003: 95) manages to neatly express the contextualist sentiment negatively when he claims that we ought to resist the “one solution fits all” definition for corporate sustainability. More positively, he suggests that we should embrace “more specific definitions which match the development, awareness and ambition levels of organizations” (van Marrewijk Reference Van Marrewijk2003: 95, emphasis added). Building on this perspective, van Marrewijk and Werre (Reference Van Marrewijk and Werre2003) propose that the purpose of a differentiated set of definitions of corporate sustainability should be to help business organizations find their appropriate developmental path to corporate sustainability given their external (i.e., institutional) environment as well as the internal values of the organization. Van Marrewijk and Werre (Reference Van Marrewijk and Werre2003: 108) therefore maintain the position that there is “no such thing as the features of corporate sustainability.” In short, on this view, we must first seek to understand the position and perspective of business organizations before useful conceptualizations of corporate sustainability can be formulated.

Writing from a similar vantage point, after highlighting the difficulty of defining the notion of corporate sustainability, Rasche et al. (Reference Rasche, Morsing, Moon, Kourula, Rasche, Morsing, Moon and Kourula2023: 13) similarly stress that there is no one-size-fits-all approach towards corporate sustainability. Accordingly, they highlight that determining the meaning of corporate sustainability for a particular business organization will necessarily depend upon contextual factors, including the size and ownership structure of the business organization, the sector in which it operates, and the geographic location of its activities (Rasche et al., Reference Rasche, Morsing, Moon, Kourula, Rasche, Morsing, Moon and Kourula2023: 13). In short, they conclude: “Contexts and events matter when it comes to sustainability” (Rasche et al., Reference Rasche, Morsing, Moon, Kourula, Rasche, Morsing, Moon and Kourula2023: 13, emphasis original). More concretely, Rasche et al. (Reference Rasche, Morsing, Moon, Kourula, Rasche, Morsing, Moon and Kourula2023: 16) argue that because of the multidimensional nature of corporate sustainability, and the extremely wide-ranging issues that can be categorized under the often-invoked generic dimensions (e.g., environmental, social, governance, etc.), firms must inevitably be selective when choosing the core sustainability issues that “specifically apply to their own corporate context.” Following this logic, it may be pointed out that, by extension, this same requirement of selectivity also gets imposed on any theorist seeking to conceptualize corporate sustainability.Footnote ⁴

Going beyond these “narrow” contextualist approaches focused primarily on the organizational perspective, Hahn et al. (Reference Hahn, Pinkse, Preuss and Figge2015: 302) advocate for a more comprehensive contextualist approach when they claim that “Corporate sustainability and its underlying economic, environmental, and social aspects are not conceptually equivalent across levels of analysis but instead have different connotations at individual, firm, and systemic levels.” They further illustrate this point by suggesting that “what would be perceived as a proper response to a sustainability issue at the level of the individual decisionmaker might not find support at an organisational level; similarly, an organisational response to a sustainability issue might seem adequate from a firm-level perspective but could nonetheless fail to address the issue from a systemic-level perspective” (Hahn et al. Reference Hahn, Pinkse, Preuss and Figge2015: 302). This contextualist lens therefore stresses the fact that theorists must deal with the complex interactions between competing contextual notions of corporate sustainability. Presumably, on this account, theorists must therefore track a variety of heterogeneous notions of corporate sustainability operative at multiple levels of analysis in order to better understand why particular meanings of corporate sustainability become prominent and/or effective in the corporate domain.

Overall, the contextualist strategy therefore tends to emphasize the operative, localized meanings of corporate sustainability—thereby, by extension, putting the notion of the local adaptability of business organizations (or larger systems) center stage. Given these brief considerations that seem to speak in favor of a broadly contextualist strategy, the following question may now be raised: Does the contextualist strategy succeed in (dis)solving the problem of conceptual disagreement about the idea of corporate sustainability? The foundationalist position towards the task of conceptualizing corporate sustainability says “no.”

The Foundationalist Strategy

While the foundationalist strategy of course recognizes that there are a wide variety of meanings of corporate sustainability available in the organizational realm, it claims that theorists can and should focus on developing more general, fixed, and stable conceptual foundations that could underpin the overarching concept of corporate sustainability. Consequently, this foundationalist strategy gets adopted by scholars who claim that the concept of corporate sustainability will remain defective, and thus prevent further progress in the corporate realm, as long as theorists fail to formulate the “essential” and/or “ideal” features of corporate sustainability (Benn et al. Reference Benn, Edwards and Williams2018; Dyllick & Muff Reference Dyllick and Muff2016; Landrum Reference Landrum2017; Meuer et al. Reference Meuer, Koelbel and Hoffmann2020).

Meuer et al. (Reference Meuer, Koelbel and Hoffmann2020: 320, emphasis added) clearly express this foundationalist sentiment when they claim that the literature’s failure to explain how firms can contribute to sustainable development can fundamentally be traced back to the “lack of clarity among researchers around the essence of corporate sustainability.” They continue to elaborate on this point by suggesting that without sufficient clarity on the “essential features” of the concept of corporate sustainability, corporate sustainability communication will continue to be undermined since there will be no clear (normative) standards and/or criteria available that can be invoked in order to distinguish between sustainable and unsustainable corporate activities (Meuer et al., Reference Meuer, Koelbel and Hoffmann2020: 320). Moreover, practically speaking, this lack of clarity is also deemed to be highly problematic for managers “because it results in uncertainty when deciding how their firms can effectively incorporate sustainable practices into their activities” (Meuer et al., Reference Meuer, Koelbel and Hoffmann2020: 320).

Dyllick and Muff (Reference Dyllick and Muff2016), on the other hand, motivate their foundationalist position by emphasizing the “big disconnect” that has been obtained over the past couple of decades between micro-level sustainability “progress” (i.e., at the organizational level) and macro-level deterioration (i.e., at the global level). In other words, they highlight the fact that although “sustainability management has become more widespread among business corporations, the impact of these activities is not reflected in studies that monitor the state of the planet” (Dyllick & Muff, Reference Dyllick and Muff2016: 156). Consequently, on their view, the question of “What is a sustainable corporation?” therefore cannot plausibly be answered independently anymore of the question “How can businesses make effective contributions to the sustainability challenges humanity is facing?” Dyllick and Muff (Reference Dyllick and Muff2016: 166) thus argue that the meaning of “true business sustainability” requires firms to first look at “the external environment within which it operates and then asks itself what it can do to help overcome critical challenges that demand the resources and competencies it has at its disposal.” This foundationalist commitment therefore entails giving normative priority to the sustainability challenges that have been identified and formulated from a societal perspective (i.e., the outside-in perspective) in order to appropriately determine the proper meaning of corporate sustainability for business organizations (Dyllick & Muff, Reference Dyllick and Muff2016: 166).

Finally, Landrum (Reference Landrum2017) picks up on the key observation set out by Dyllick and Muff (Reference Dyllick and Muff2016) with regards to the “big disconnect” and continues with her own proposal by suggesting that this disconnect can be best explained by recognizing that businesses implement sustainability practices in radically different ways depending on the different “worldviews” about what corporate sustainability is supposed to mean for corporate action (Landrum, Reference Landrum2017: 288; see also, Gladwin et al., Reference Gladwin, Kennelly and Krause1995). Landrum’s (Reference Landrum2017: 292) foundationalist approach consequently appeals to the “theory of weak and strong sustainability” in order to explain the different normative underpinnings of these worldviews (see also Roome, Reference Roome, Bansal and Hoffman2011). She suggests that until now many corporate sustainability models have primarily adopted a very narrow understanding of corporate sustainability that is merely framed around “weak sustainability.” Since weak sustainability dictates an incremental approach to corporate sustainability, most businesses have been stuck with only the “business case” as their motivational framework (Landrum, Reference Landrum2017: 305). Yet, Landrum (Reference Landrum2017: 292) claims that only an approach towards strong corporate sustainability can make consistent (or bridge) the micro-level meanings of corporate sustainability and macro-level meanings of sustainable development. For Landrum (Reference Landrum2017), providing a “unified model” of corporate sustainability therefore requires paying a lot more attention to key normative issues such as the nonsubstitutability of nature, intergenerational equity, and the evolving human-nature relationship.

Overall, the foundationalist strategy therefore advocates for more robust normative foundations that involve an explicit appeal to global principles of justice and ecological constraints. From a conceptual perspective, it moreover stresses that such normative foundations are required for building corporate sustainability models that can successfully bridge local, organizational meanings of corporate sustainability with the meanings of sustainable development at a more global level.

The Interplay Between Empirical and Normative Theorizing

Before we further examine the strengths and limitations of these two general conceptual strategies in the next section, I would like to first highlight the crucial dynamic between empirical and normative theorizing that each of these concept formation strategies is inevitably confronted with. While in the literature on corporate sustainability, many scholars have claimed that sustainable development, and by extension corporate sustainability, fundamentally represent normative concepts, I propose that the notion of corporate sustainability is best understood as a mixed concept which involves both descriptive and normative elements (to be elaborated on shortly). To make this point, we must first, however, briefly turn to the normative characterization of (corporate) sustainable development found in the literature.Footnote ⁵

For example, Hahn et al. (Reference Hahn, Pinkse, Preuss and Figge2015: 298) propose that sustainable development is a normative concept because it outlines desirable paths of societies, thereby mapping normative characteristics onto particular trajectories of change. In a similar vein, DesJardins (Reference DesJardins2016: 120) suggests that sustainable development is a normative concept because it provides “a direction or norm that should guide practical decision-making in public policy and economics.” DesJardins (Reference DesJardins2016: 120) furthermore continues by claiming that “the appeal to sustainability [also] plays a justificatory and normative role in most contemporary business settings where to describe an activity as sustainable is to justify and approve of it.” Similarly, to call a business activity “unsustainable” is to explicitly express disapproval. More broadly, it may be argued that many of the attempts to rank and/or evaluate business organizations with regards to sustainability metrics necessarily leads to a range of positive and negative normative judgments concerning the behavior of the business organizations that are included. In short, it seems entirely correct to say that the “vision of corporate sustainability has a strong normative character” (Schaltegger & Burritt, Reference Schaltegger, Burritt, Folmer and Tietenberg2005: 206).

Nevertheless, I claim that in order to more accurately capture the complex conceptual dynamics that are at stake in conceptualizing corporate sustainability, we must acknowledge the fact that conceptualizations of corporate sustainability often result in what Alexandrova (Reference Alexandrova2017: 80) has termed “mixed” concepts. Thus, just like with the mixed concepts of “well-being” (Alexandrova, Reference Alexandrova2017: 80) and “democracy” (Crasnow, Reference Crasnow, Kincaid and van Bouwel2023: 188), I propose that conceptualizing corporate sustainability involves a “mixing” of empirical and normative elements. The contextualist and foundationalist strategies towards conceptualizing corporate sustainability, besides incorporating certain normative presuppositions, therefore are also engaged in picking out key descriptive features of business organizations, industries, and/or management paradigms. In fact, determining the descriptive content of such features is essential because without any clarity about such descriptive content there would be no way to identify the relevant application conditions for using the concept of corporate sustainability in actual discourse (a point also alluded to in the previous section). Hence, it is only by positing some descriptive content that theorists have sufficient grounds to make any robust claims about which actual (or even idealized and/or hypothetical) business organizations, industries, and so on, are (closer to) realizing sustainability in the organizational realm. Overall, in order to better make sense of conceptualizations of corporate sustainability, we must therefore get clearer on the exact relationship that obtains between the concepts’ normative presuppositions and the descriptive-empirical content (as well as the normative implications that follow from this).

Before doing this, however, it is worth briefly noting that the concept of corporate sustainability sits especially close to the concept of democracy since it equally concerns a social property that carries moral/political value assumptions and moral/political value implications (see, e.g., Coppedge et al., Reference Coppedge, Gerring, Altman, Bernhard, Fish, Hicken, Kroenig, Lindberg, McMann, Paxton, Semetko, Skaaning, Staton and Teorell2011; Crasnow, Reference Crasnow, Kincaid and van Bouwel2023; Osterberg-Kaufmann, Stark, & Mohamad-Klotzbach, Reference Osterberg-Kaufmann, Stark and Mohamad-Klotzbach2023; Sabl, Reference Sabl2015). Accordingly, some key lessons learned from conceptualizing democracy may thus be usefully applied to research in the area of corporate sustainability. For example, it has been noted that folk (i.e., pre-theoretical) notions of democracy (e.g., “rule by the people”) may not be appropriate for empirical inquiry but instead requires a deeper, more substantive kind of normative theory (Sabl, Reference Sabl2015: 346). Similarly, while corporate sustainability may be pre-theoretically understood as involving the realization of economic, social, and environmental values, alternative understandings of its normative core could be elaborated on in a variety of ways, thereby framing and supporting different lines of empirical research. It has also been noted that empirical accounts of democracy often “cite a normative account of what democracy ought to be, in order to justify a study of how fully it in fact meets this standard (or doesn’t)” (Sabl, Reference Sabl2015: 347). Again, conceptualizations of corporate sustainability may adopt this heuristic and work with strongly idealized concepts of corporate sustainability (containing perhaps minimal descriptive content) in order to empirically track the potential deviances from (and/or partial embodiment of) such ideas in the real world. Finally, scholars theorizing about corporate sustainability may also draw inspiration from approaches to conceptualizations of democracy which aim to specifically explain “transitions to and reversions from democracy” (Crasnow, Reference Crasnow, Kincaid and van Bouwel2023: 185), thereby paying particular attention to the idea that realizing corporate sustainability will require a better conceptual and theoretical understanding of relevant transition pathways.

However, for now, the main point that should be highlighted is that we have motivated and made plausible the idea that corporate sustainability is best understood as a mixed concept. Given this fact, it seems reasonable to suppose that the activity of concept formation in the study of corporate sustainability would greatly benefit from a more explicitly ethical lens. While earlier writings in business ethics have examined the relevance of the distinction between empirical and normative as it relates to the methodologies (and meta-methodologies) of business ethics (Donaldson, Reference Donaldson1994; Rosenthal & Buchholz, Reference Rosenthal and Buchholz2000; Victor & Stephens, Reference Victor and Stephens1994; Weaver & Trevino, Reference Weaver and Trevino1994; Werhane, Reference Werhane1994), the business ethics literature has not yet sufficiently addressed this issue from the perspective of the methodology of concept formation. Consequently, a deeper examination of the dominant strategies of concept formation in the study of corporate sustainability arguably offers a fruitful new area to (re-)explore (some of) the processes in which the mixing of empirical and normative commitments takes place when theorizing about the behavior of business.

For the remainder of this article, I propose to use the following simplified three-step dynamics as the relevant theoretical background to capture this interplay between empirical and normative theorizing in the study of corporate sustainability.

Firstly, theorists begin developing conceptualizations of corporate sustainability by presupposing a certain value-laden orientation that includes judgments about the relevant obstacles, challenges, and problems that ought to be addressed. These obstacles, challenges, and problems are thus judged as significant from a normative perspective for realizing the overall aims of corporate sustainability.Footnote ⁶ While it may be true that competing conceptualizations of corporate sustainability often presuppose a similar set of normative commitments by judging certain general obstacles to be of relevance for any business organizations—such as the “grand challenges,” including climate change, ecosystem degradation, and social inequality) (see also, Burbano et al., Reference Burbano, Delmas and Cobo2024; Van der Byl, Slawinski, & Hahn, Reference Van der Byl, Slawinski, Hahn, Laasch, Suddaby, Freeman and Jamali2020; Whiteman et al. Reference Whiteman, Walker and Perego2013)—I propose that they may in addition be presupposing much more specific obstacles that will eventually bear on the particular conceptual content invoked.

Secondly, theorists construct competing concepts of corporate sustainability with the aim of generating new causal knowledge about the effective ways in which these obstacles, challenges, and problems can plausibly be tackled over time. For example, research may highlight the fact that certain kinds of ethical motivations tied to particular high-level normative principles may be required for (or conducive to) pursuing certain kinds of corporate sustainability activities and outcomes (see, for example, Schaltegger & Burritt, Reference Schaltegger and Burritt2018). On the other hand, research may seek to provide robust explanations for how business corporations gain a competitive advantage via sustainability, thereby illustrating in greater detail how certain normatively grounded sustainability demands get robustly realized in the causal order.

Thirdly, theorists use this (causal) knowledge that is generated from inquiry and feed it back into normative deliberations about desirable paths towards corporate sustainability and the appropriate responsibility distributions they entail. The idea here is that at this stage of inquiry the causal knowledge generated via the distinct concepts of corporate sustainability should give a better understanding of the kinds of causal powers possessed by business organizations (as well as other larger systems) and thus carries certain normative implications about the responsibilities business organizations have given these distinct powers. Put differently, we may claim that at this stage of inquiry, the problem-solving abilities of business organizations have been stated explicitly and therefore judgments about business organizations’ responsibilities can now be properly assessed.

In the next section, I return to the contextualist and foundationalist strategies for conceptualizing corporate sustainability and explain why adopting either of these “pure” conceptual strategies is problematic.

A Specific CRM Model: The Limitations of Contextualism

In a recently published longitudinal case study of Unilever PLC, Narikiyo et al. (Reference Narikiyo, Harris and Elmassri2025) describe how the consumer goods company has evolved its strategies towards carbon reduction. Based on ten years of archival data (2011–2020), they analyze the narrative in the company’s annual reports and carbon disclosure survey responses. For this study, they use both quantitative (form-oriented) and qualitative (meaning-oriented) content analysis in order to translate their findings into a specific CRM model. Their results show the distinct stages of development that Unilever went through based on their particular carbon reduction strategies and performance over this ten-year period.

In terms of its background commitments, this study embodies the contextualist strategy by focusing on a particular company, namely, Unilever PLC, which is seen as “an acknowledged leader in green strategy” (Narikiyo et al., Reference Narikiyo, Harris and Elmassri2025: 1). More concretely, the authors state that they picked Unilever “as it was crowned as the most consistent sustainability leader in the world (GlobeScan, 2020) and was ranked in the top position in a sustainability ranking of the food and agriculture industry in 2022 (World Benchmarking Alliance, 2022)” (Narikiyo et al., Reference Narikiyo, Harris and Elmassri2025: 3). In terms of the operationalization of this conceptual strategy, however, the first thing to note is that although Unilever has been described as a sustainable corporation based on a wide-range of factors such as leading practices across domains such as governance and strategy, environment, nutrition, and social inclusion (World Benchmarking Alliance, 2022), for the purpose of this study the focus is exclusively on the issue of carbon reduction. A conceptual judgment was thus made by the authors that shifts the focus to (only) one of the essential issues from which corporate sustainability efforts are to be judged.

In their study, Narikiyo et al. (Reference Narikiyo, Harris and Elmassri2025: 2) initially draw on a more general corporate sustainability maturity model and content analysis performed by Landrum and Ohsowski (Reference Landrum and Ohsowski2018). The foundationalist maturity model used by Landrum and Ohsowski (Reference Landrum and Ohsowski2018), itself based on earlier work by Landrum (Reference Landrum2017), conceptualizes corporate sustainability based on five distinct stages of development: Compliance (Phase 1—very weak sustainability), Business-centered (Phase 2—weak sustainability), Systematic (Phase 3—intermediate sustainability), Regenerative (Phase 4—strong sustainability), and Coevolutionary (Phase 5—very strong sustainability). Yet, crucially, while Narikiyo et al. (Reference Narikiyo, Harris and Elmassri2025: 4) begin their analysis of Unilever PLC’s annual reports by applying the same set of sixty keywords that Landrum and Ohsowski (Reference Landrum and Ohsowski2018) identified on the basis of the distinct stages of development, they ultimately argue that this “form-oriented” content analysis ought to be complemented with a “meaning-oriented” content analysis. This latter form of content analysis is based on their own interpretation and reconstruction of the key themes identified in the company narrative, as found in the responses by Unilever to the carbon disclosure project (CDP) survey (CDP, 2020).

According to Narikiyo et al. (Reference Narikiyo, Harris and Elmassri2025: 4), the reason for applying this additional type of content analysis is because the former mode of analysis, focused on relative frequency of keywords, embodies “a ‘top down’ approach to content analysis of overall sustainability” that may be misleading since “the frequency of use of sustainability language does not necessarily show the firm is behaving in a sustainable way.” Accordingly, the latter mode of content analysis is deemed necessary since it offers a more “bottom-up” approach which enables the reconstruction of key themes based on the larger company narrative (Narikiyo et al., Reference Narikiyo, Harris and Elmassri2025: 4). From the perspective of concept formation, this methodological decision to complement the form-oriented analysis with a meaning-oriented analysis is highly relevant since it demonstrates the manner in which company-specific patterns of meaning are difficult to capture (observationally as well as conceptually) via overall sustainability categories (in this case operationalized via general keywords). Thus, because of their contextualist orientation, Narikiyo et al. (Reference Narikiyo, Harris and Elmassri2025) are in fact forced to move away from the “overall sustainability” model of Landrum and Ohsowski (Reference Landrum and Ohsowski2018) and introduce and develop their own CRM model (only keeping the “labels” of the generic stages of development).

Shifting to the CRM model itself, the model aims to capture the key changes in strategies and carbon reduction activities of Unilever PLC. Based on the carbon disclosure survey responses (2011–2020), three main themes are identified (Narikiyo et al., Reference Narikiyo, Harris and Elmassri2025: 5–7): First, there is the theme of product strategy which captures the fact that Unilever developed eco-friendly detergents over this time period. Second, there is the theme of risk assessment which describes Unilever’s merger and acquisitions activity that supported the acceleration of plant-based products in order to mitigate risks related to climate change. Third, there is the theme of emission reduction performance and carbon pricing, which highlights the methods used by Unilever to drive investment in emissions reduction activities, including financial optimization calculations (2011), dedicated budget for energy efficiency (2012–2020), employee engagement (2013–2020), and an internal price on carbon (2016–2020).

Based on these considerations, Narikiyo et al. (Reference Narikiyo, Harris and Elmassri2025: 7–8) develop their CRM model (2011–2020) and suggest that Unilever has progressed in its strategic responses to carbon reduction from Compliance (Phase 1) to Regenerative (Phase 4). For our purposes, the most relevant conceptual point to look at in terms of the outcome of this modeling exercise is why Unilever is said to be “stuck” in the regenerative phase as well as what it would take for it to progress to the final, fifth phase (i.e., Coevolutionary). According to Narikiyo et al. (Reference Narikiyo, Harris and Elmassri2025: 8), the primary reason why Unilever PLC is currently placed in Phase 4 (as of 2020) is because although it has adopted the application of the internal shadow price of carbon, the particular shadow pricing scheme used does not charge the prices of carbon emissions to the business (Narikiyo et al., Reference Narikiyo, Harris and Elmassri2025: 8). Additionally, they argue that Unilever may still take further measures to help entities in their value chain to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as well as disclose the emissions which arise from activities across their supply chain (Narikiyo et al., Reference Narikiyo, Harris and Elmassri2025: 8).

The key contextualist normative commitment invoked at this exact point is that the failure to disclose such emissions demonstrates the “lack of ambition of the case company [i.e., Unilever PLC] to add an extra layer of environmental accountability.” In other words, based on Unilever’s current activities and capabilities, this precise normative judgment determines the empirical ordering of the stages of development concerning Unilever’s trajectory of change. Moreover, in terms of recommendations for further development, Narikiyo et al. (Reference Narikiyo, Harris and Elmassri2025: 9) note that if Unilever PLC seeks to move closer to realizing carbon reduction maturity, they must adopt the practices of full carbon pricing and full disclosure of carbon impacts—thus identifying these practices as both normatively desirable as well as essentially descriptively accurate features of the realization of the Coevolutionary stage.

While this CRM model illustrates the fact that context-sensitive conceptual judgments are part and parcel of capturing certain parts of the meaning of corporate sustainability, as well as necessary for offering clear practical guidance, the model also has some important limitations. For example, by moving away from the general sustainability categories, the model’s insights cannot be easily generalized to other businesses and thus fails to improve our understanding of the relevant global dynamics that may challenge the efficacy of carbon reduction strategies in the corporate realm. The model, moreover, does not capture the manner in which carbon reduction strategies and practices are interrelated with a variety of other sustainability issues. Finally, although the normative judgment concerning Unilever’s environmental accountability was important for specifying the current stage of its carbon reduction maturity, no elaborate normative justification was offered for this. Therefore, the specific connections between the company’s strategies and issues of global principles of justice and/or ecological constraints were not made concrete.

The DICE Model: The Limitations of Foundationalism

Within the global sustainability discourse, the DICE model, as developed by Nordhaus (Reference Nordhaus1992, Reference Nordhaus1993, Reference Nordhaus2008, Reference Nordhaus2013, Reference Nordhaus2018, Reference Nordhaus2019), is a key modeling framework used for analyzing climate change and its economic impacts. The model belongs to a broader family of models referred to as integrated assessment models (IAMs) which have become extremely important in the literature on the economics of climate change (as well as for policymaking). IAMs can be defined as computerized “approaches that integrate knowledge from two or more domains [in the case of the economics of climate change, socio-economic and climatic considerations] into a single framework” (Nordhaus, Reference Nordhaus2018: 624). As laid out by Nordhaus in his 2018 Nobel lecture, the basic structure of the DICE model involves the logical circular flow from emissions due to economic growth and distorted price signals (Nordhaus, Reference Nordhaus2019: Figure 2, box 1), to rising CO2 concentrations and other forces leading to climate change (box 2), to climate change imposing ecological impacts and economic damages (box 3), to climate-change policies determining the societal responses geared towards a lower carbon economy (box 4) (Nordhaus, Reference Nordhaus2019: 1994–1995). Thus, it is within this single model architecture that the DICE model aims to capture the “economy-climate-impacts-politics-economy nexus” (Nordhaus, Reference Nordhaus2019: 1994).

For the purposes of this article, the DICE model can be understood as a foundationalist kind of (global) sustainability model due to its explicit aim to be comprehensive. Thus, Nordhaus (Reference Nordhaus2013: 28) states that the “main advantage of IAMs is that they can represent the entire process [i.e., the circular flow mentioned above] from start to finish.” Moreover, as noted earlier, the foundationalist strategy emphasizes the need to make larger models of (corporate) sustainable development theoretically coherent. Again, Nordhaus (Reference Nordhaus2019: 2001–2002) touches upon these issues when he notes that “the most important advantage of integrated models [i.e., IAMs] is that they are internally consistent. That is, they keep track of the different stocks and flows of all variables so that nothing gets lost.” Elsewhere, he elaborates on this point by claiming that because the “relationships that link economic growth, GHG emissions, the carbon cycle, the climate system, impacts and damages, and possible policies are exceedingly complex,” the purpose of the DICE model is not to provide definitive answers to climate-economy questions, but rather to offer answers that “are internally consistent and at best provide a state-of-the-art description of the impacts of different forces and policies” (Nordhaus, Reference Nordhaus2008: 9).

One key feature of the DICE model is that, within the context of developing its particular model of the economy, it adopts the theoretical perspective of neoclassical economic growth theory. As explained by Nordhaus (Reference Nordhaus2008: 6), “[i]n this approach, economies make investments in capital, education, and technologies, thereby abstaining from consumption today, in order to increase consumption in the future. In the case of the DICE model, this approach gets extended by including the natural capital of the climate system as an additional kind of capital stock.” Accordingly, in terms of its policy orientation, the core idea of a framework like DICE is “that an optimal climate policy is one that maximizes intergenerational expected utility, taking into account the costs of mitigation policies as well as their future benefit of preventing damages that would otherwise have resulted from future GHG emissions” (Frisch, Reference Frisch, Winsberg and Lloyd2018: 416). Overall, this model is best characterized as an “optimizing model” that ranks different paths of consumption (constrained by geophysical and economic relationships) in order to maximize social welfare over time in a utilitarian fashion.

With this brief (conceptual, nontechnical) outline of the DICE model in place, several criticisms of the model can now be raised which highlight some of the key conceptual issues at stake. For example, as readily acknowledged by Nordhaus (Reference Nordhaus2013: 29) himself, a key disadvantage of the DICE model is that it simplifies some of the processes that can be found in more local (i.e., regional) models. In other words, much regional information gets lost via the aggregation processes underlying the DICE model as well as the local-regional trade-offs involved (Nordhaus, Reference Nordhaus2008: 194). Others point out that the DICE model unjustifiably assumes strong underlying growth combined with only modest damages from significant increases in temperature, as well as limited risk by not taking into account the possibility of catastrophic risks (Stern, Reference Stern2015). More broadly, it has been argued that IAMs like the DICE model are infected by “deep uncertainties,” making the aim of defining an optimal climate policy that maximizes overall welfare or expected utility a misguided one (Frisch, Reference Frisch2013). Finally, a point particularly relevant to the purpose of this article is the lack of social and institutional considerations within the DICE model. Thus, as noted by Proctor (Reference Proctor2023: 552), “Standard climate-economy models explore a world in which the technology that underlays our economy changes dramatically [i.e. technology is treated as exogenous], but the fundamental structure of the economy, and the broader society it supports remain essentially the same.” In other words, the DICE model is only able to operationalize a highly abstract, utilitarian notion of sustainability because of the way in which it ignores the complex institutional and corporate dynamics which are likely to evolve and change over time.Footnote ¹⁰

In agreement with Stern (Reference Stern2015: 147), we may therefore conclude that although the DICE model provides “a coherent and powerful [foundationalist] framework for assessing the costs and benefits of climate change and mitigation,” “one cannot and should not expect a single model to capture all relevant [climate] issues.” When thinking about model pluralism, one idea that is particularly important here is that of “problem framing” (i.e., the first step of the dynamics between empirical and normative theorizing identified earlier in this article). Thus, as noted by Beck and Krueger (Reference Beck and Krueger2016: 634), IAMs like the DICE model have a particular understanding of the climate change problem that presupposes a normative orientation concerning what is significant about the problem and its relevant trade-offs. For example, Stern and Stiglitz (Reference Stern and Stiglitz2023: 287) note that IAMs tend to assume that there must be a trade-off between climate action and economic growth which they suggest, however, “has little or no foundation.” Elsewhere, Stern (Reference Stern2015: xvii) suggests that climate policy can also be approached from a different perspective that highlights the dynamics of change and learning and thereby avoids the excessive focus on certain trade-offs.

By analogy, I propose that the foundationalist strategy embodied by the DICE model also fails to capture the relevant dynamics of change and learning as it pertains to concept formation in the study of (corporate) sustainability. In other words, by neglecting the empirical diversity and real-word complexity found in the corporate realm, a foundationalist model like the DICE model is unable to accommodate and capture the multiple operative meanings of corporate sustainability in the corporate realm that are (or will be) essential for describing, guiding, and envisioning trajectories of change towards corporate sustainability.

To conclude, based on the two specific models discussed in this section, I propose that we should not expect the contextualist nor the foundationalist strategy to robustly satisfy the key requirements of theoretical robustness and practical usefulness simultaneously. Since these are the key requirements for a productive and systematic approach to concept formation in the study of corporate sustainability, it is important to search for a new approach that is better able to satisfy these requirements. Next, I argue that the position of conceptual pluralism provides a way to do this by partially reconciling contextualist and foundationalist commitments.

Towards a Flexible, Multilevel Framework

The position of conceptual pluralism therefore advocates for a flexible perspective that can accommodate multiple, coexisting concepts of corporate sustainability, tailored to diverse contexts, levels of analysis, and theoretical goals. To sufficiently establish conceptual pluralism as a distinct conceptual strategy, however, we must address the following question: “How does this multilevel framework enabled by conceptual pluralism differ from a stream of research in the literature which already highlights the fact that corporate sustainability should be conceptualized from a multilevel ‘systems view’ (i.e., focused on capturing the causal interactions of sustainability factors between competing levels of analysis, e.g., individual, organizational, and systemic)?” (see, e.g., Bansal & Song, Reference Bansal and Song2017; Hahn et al., Reference Hahn, Pinkse, Preuss and Figge2015; Marshall & Brown, Reference Marshall and Brown2003; Rasche et al., Reference Rasche, Morsing, Moon, Kourula, Rasche, Morsing, Moon and Kourula2023; Starik & Rands, Reference Starik and Rands1995; Valente, Reference Valente2012; Whiteman et al., Reference Whiteman, Walker and Perego2013; Williams et al., Reference Williams, Perego and Whiteman2025). I propose that the position of conceptual pluralism can be usefully distinguished from this systems view based on the following two (closely related) points.

Firstly, contrary to the position of conceptual pluralism, a systems view in the study of corporate sustainability as such does not explicitly advocate for a particular strategy and/or methodology of concept formation. While the systems view tends to highlight the fact that corporate sustainability must be understood as a multilevel concept (e.g., individual, firm, systemic) (Hahn et al., Reference Hahn, Pinkse, Preuss and Figge2015: 301), it does not per se include claims about how, at each level of abstraction, conceptualizations of corporate sustainability are best constructed. In other words, the position of conceptual pluralism is able to bring a higher level of awareness to the study of corporate sustainability with regards to the (empirical and normative) trade-offs that different conceptual strategies must face. Accordingly, it is able to more explicitly identify the conceptual challenges that must be addressed if we seek to construct larger constellations of multiple conceptualizations of corporate sustainability that theorists may simultaneously need in order to penetrate corporate sustainability phenomena. This focus on finding possibilities of reconciliation between competing conceptualizations of corporate sustainability is thus a specific aim emphasized by conceptual pluralism that does not directly follow from a systems orientation.

Secondly, because the systems view towards corporate sustainability argues that “[g]lobal sustainability can be studied and pursued most effectively through a multilevel analysis—i.e. the integrated analysis of interactions between systems at different levels—such as individual, organizational, societal, and planetary” (Siqueira et al., Reference Siqueira, Neesham, Landrum and Kanashiro2025: 18, emphasis added), it tends to put the central focus on (causal) inter-level issues. Thus, proponents of the systems view in the literature on corporate sustainability often highlight that corporate sustainability has put too much emphasis on the firm-level, thereby neglecting more systemic concerns (Whiteman et al., Reference Whiteman, Walker and Perego2013; Williams et al., Reference Williams, Perego and Whiteman2025). While the alignment of macro-level sustainability indicators (e.g., tied to planetary boundaries) and sustainability indicators within the organizational context is undoubtedly of critical importance, there may be a legitimate worry that the systems perspective embraces an overly skeptical attitude towards conceptualizations of corporate sustainability at the lower level(s) of abstraction (although see Starik & Rands, Reference Starik and Rands1995).Footnote ¹³

For example, in the context of discussing systems thinking for sustainability management, Williams, Kennedy, Philipp, and Whiteman (Reference Williams, Kennedy, Philipp and Whiteman2017: 867) approvingly cite Gray (Reference Gray2010: 48, emphasis added) claiming that “sustainability is a systems-based concept and, environmentally at least, only begins to make any sense at the level of ecosystems and is probably difficult to really conceptualize at anything below planetary and species levels.”Footnote ¹⁴ In contrast, the conceptual pluralist approach emphasizes that conceptualizations of sustainability at the level of the firm are also fully intelligible, and, although not providing any guarantees in terms of realizing corporate sustainability outcomes globally, can fully support the search for firm characteristics that tend to generate behavior that at least brings us closer to the realizations of such aims. From the perspective of conceptual pluralism, we should therefore simply seek to construct better (constellations of) conceptualizations of corporate sustainability at the level of the firm which are more responsive to systemic concerns. Overall, while I thus agree with the core message of the systems view in the study of corporate sustainability to develop conceptual models which help us understand interconnections between levels (Williams et al., Reference Williams, Kennedy, Philipp and Whiteman2017), the key lesson we should draw from this is that our conceptual approach should ideally be sensitive towards both intra- and inter-level considerations. In other words, firm-level and system-level perspectives should be seen as complementary (see also, Schneider & Murray, Reference Schneider and Murray2025). Arguably, the conceptual pluralist position is extremely well suited to recognize this complementarity.Footnote ¹⁵ In an important sense, while the systems view thus carries its own set of commitments, it could in principle be integrated with the broader framework of conceptual pluralism.

The Sustainable Corporation 1: High-Level Principles

The first approach towards conceptualizing the concept of the sustainable corporation that I will discuss focuses on “high-level principles.” At the core, this approach seeks to identify the relevant social properties of sustainable corporations via the key values embodied in the principles underpinning sustainable development. Some prominent examples that have advocated for this approach in the literature include: Gladwin et al. (Reference Gladwin, Kennelly and Krause1995) who identify the high-level principles of 1) inclusiveness, 2) connectedness, 3) equity, 4) prudency, and 5) security; Bansal (Reference Bansal2005) who emphasizes the high-level principles of economic integrity, social equity, and environmental integrity; and, finally, Valente (Reference Valente2012) who introduces the high-level principles of 1) inclusiveness, 2) interconnectedness, and 3) equity. For the remainder of this subsection, due to limitations of space, I will exclusively focus on Bansal’s (Reference Bansal2005) proposal.

First of all, it is worth stressing that a focus on high-level principles arguably fits very well with the evolution of the concept of corporate sustainability because, as already alluded to earlier, sustainable development was defined by the WCED (1987) as resting on the adoption of the three core principles of environmental integrity, social equity, and economic prosperity (Bansal, Reference Bansal2005). Bansal (Reference Bansal2005: 197–198), however, early on noted that our understanding of how sustainable development was to be operationalized in business organizations was still weak. She therefore set herself the task to “identify how the principles of sustainable development apply to and are articulated by firms” (Bansal, Reference Bansal2005: 198). Consequently, Bansal (Reference Bansal2005: 199) defined the sustainable corporation as consisting in the simultaneous application of the principles of economic integrity, social equity, and environmental integrity to corporate products, policies, and practices.

More specifically, Bansal (Reference Bansal2005: 199–200) managed to successfully operationalize the principles of sustainable development by connecting them to (and thus integrating them with) three different management fields (Montiel & Delgado-Ceballos, Reference Montiel and Delgado-Ceballos2014: 14). Firstly, it was argued that environmental integrity could be achieved by business organizations through “corporate environmental management,” thus highlighting the much-needed efforts by business organizations to reduce their ecological footprint. Secondly, it was claimed that social equity was to be operationalized in terms of the firm’s “corporate social responsibilities,” thereby trying to identify the expanding range of social issues that were expected to be addressed by business organizations. Finally, it was proposed that economic prosperity could be achieved through value creation, which importantly was considered to be something more than just high financial performance.

Given our main focus on concept formation, it is important to recognize that this particular conceptualization of the sustainable corporation focused on high-level principles is rather explicit about its aims to satisfy the requirements of completeness and nonredundancy. Why? Because it is argued that the sustainable corporation can only be achieved and/or realized at the intersection of these three principles. Thus, as noted by Bansal (Reference Bansal2005: 198), each of these principles represents a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition. In other words, if any one of the principles does not sufficiently get implemented, economic development cannot be deemed sustainable. In earlier work, Bansal (Reference Bansal2002: 123) therefore stresses the fact that these different dimensions of corporate sustainability are “inextricably connected and internally interdependent.” While it is therefore obvious that this proposal pays a lot of attention to the above-mentioned conceptual requirements, this does not of course mean that further discussions about, for instance, the completeness requirement is not a worthwhile pursuit.

For example, in the context of Bansal’s conceptualization strategy, it may be argued that another value that should be deemed necessary for realizations of the sustainable corporation is the high-level principle of “Participation.” Although introduced as a “second-order requirement” of corporate sustainability by Steurer et al. (Reference Steurer, Langer, Konrad and Martinuzzi2005: 270), participation arguably could be deemed a necessary high-level principle in which “corporate openness” in terms of input must always be sufficiently respected. In fact, Steurer et al. (Reference Steurer, Langer, Konrad and Martinuzzi2005: 272) further elaborate on the importance of this requirement by highlighting the claim that almost all publications on sustainable development stress that the concept strongly depends on the participation of various stakeholders. In an important sense, therefore, the processual how of corporate sustainability could legitimately be considered a constitutive element of the concept of the sustainable corporation.

Stepping back from these considerations, we may claim that one of the key advantages of focusing on high-level principles is that it keeps a strong focus on the normative foundation that underpins most conceptions of sustainable development. On the other hand, a potential disadvantage of this kind of approach is that it must deal with issues that arise in the case of value conflicts between the constitutive dimensions of the sustainable corporation. In order to deal with these issues, sufficient attention must therefore be paid at the level of indicators in which these different elements of the sustainable corporation must be captured and in which practitioners, theorists, and policymakers must closely examine the potential trade-offs empirically. Although this approach therefore advocates for the centrality of general high-level normative principles, it can nevertheless recognize that contextualist judgments will be required further downstream.

The Sustainable Corporation 2: Governance Capacities

Contra the principle-oriented approach, the second approach towards conceptualizing the concept of the sustainable corporation shifts the conceptual focus towards organizational attributes and their implications for governance capacities. More specifically, this approach is concerned with formulating the conceptual structure of the concept of the sustainable corporation by paying close attention to the corporate form and/or competing organizational forms that have emerged in the pursuit of sustainability. In a way, this approach therefore seeks to stress the fact that many conceptualizations of corporate sustainability have in fact not paid enough attention to the relevance of the corporate form (or other organizational forms) when conceptualizing corporate sustainability (or business sustainability). Thus, key questions that are of importance for this approach concern how and to what extent the nature and/or attributes of the corporate form stand in relevant (causal) relationships to the long-term sustainability goals.

Conceptualizations of corporate sustainability focused on the attributes of organizational forms have so far been explored by a variety of scholars. For example, Haigh and Hoffman (Reference Haigh and Hoffman2012, Reference Haigh and Hoffman2014) have highlighted the importance of “hybrid organizations” for constituting the “next chapter of sustainable business.” According to them, these hybrid organizations are important since the “pursuit of sustainability is built into their business models” (Haigh & Hoffman Reference Haigh and Hoffman2012: 130). Haigh and Hoffman (Reference Haigh and Hoffman2012: 127) furthermore identify three constitutive features of hybrid organizations that, according to them, enable them to generate “progressive meanings” of corporate sustainability, namely: 1) a business model that is configured to address social/environmental issues; 2) relationships with suppliers, employees, and customers based on mutual benefit and sustainability outcomes; and 3) interaction with market, competitors, and industry institutions focused on creating social- and environmental-friendly conditions.

Nevertheless, while we can recognize the relevance of alternative organizational forms, given the primacy of the more traditional corporate form in global affairs, for the rest of this subsection I will exclusively focus on this legal form and its implications for conceptualizing the sustainable corporation. More specifically, I will look at recent work by Bruner (Reference Bruner2021, Reference Bruner2022) who claims to conceptualize the sustainable corporation by explicitly reconceptualizing the concept of “the corporation.”Footnote ¹⁷ Bruner’s (Reference Bruner2022: 13) approach begins first and foremost with a strong attack on conceptualizations of the corporate form which conceive of it as a set of fixed, intrinsic attributes, such as 1) legal personality, 2) limited liability, 3) freely transferable shares, 4) centralized board management, and 5) shareholder election of directors. Bruner’s core objection towards this “static” conceptualization of the corporation is that it fails to properly acknowledge the inevitable contingency of the corporate form and thus misconstrues the nature of the corporate entity as such (Bruner, Reference Bruner2022: 13, 26).

According to Bruner (Reference Bruner2022: 91), we should instead think of the corporate form as “a dynamic legal technology that can be calibrated and re-calibrated, in varying contexts and over time, in response to a dynamic contextual landscape.” On this view, the corporate form simply enables a range of governance-related capacities that furthermore can each be reconceptualized as constituting a spectrum (Bruner, Reference Bruner2022: 93). Accordingly, the constitutive features of the concept of the corporation identified by this approach center on the following governance capacities: 1) governance centralization, 2) board liability exposure, 3) shareholder representation, 4) shareholder orientation, 5) shareholder enforcement, 6) shareholder transferability, and 7) shareholder liability exposure (Bruner Reference Bruner2022: 94).

Crucially, for our purposes, Bruner (Reference Bruner2022: 14) suggests that this new conception of the corporation focused on governance capacities “could help secure an environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable future.” In terms of concept formation, we may therefore claim that conceptualizing the concept of the sustainable corporation requires us to simply identify the proper configuration of governance capacities. Bruner (Reference Bruner2022: 61) reminds us, however, that this will require a highly contextualist approach which is sensitive to relevant legal, cultural, market, and historical differences. Nevertheless, despite these contextual factors, he does think that we can frame the issue of determining the relevant configuration of governance capacities for sustainability by pointing to some core “corporate pathologies” that have so far inhibited the pursuit of corporate sustainability (Bruner, Reference Bruner2022: 124). According to Bruner, these key pathologies include financialization leading to the prioritization of shareholder returns, and, derivatively, excessive risk taking and cost externalization (Bruner, Reference Bruner2022: 124).

On the basis of this particular problem framing, Bruner (Reference Bruner2022: chs. 7–8) provides several proposals that aim to recalibrate the governance capacities for different industries as well as for increasing corporate accountability more broadly. Without being able to get into the complicated details of these proposals, we may simply point to two concrete examples that are provided, which play a role in determining the substantive content of the constitutive features of conceptualizations of the sustainable corporation. Firstly, Bruner (Reference Bruner2022: 180–186) proposes that changes in the shareholder representation governance capacity should be geared towards including nonshareholder constituencies as being part of the structure of the board. Secondly, he suggests that we ought to change the shareholder and board liability exposure levers by increasing the exposure of shareholders and the board in the context of parent-subsidiary relationships, thereby aiming to promote corporate accountability in global value chains (Bruner, Reference Bruner2022: 194–206).

Overall, we may claim that this conceptualization of the sustainable corporation succeeds in terms of aiming to satisfy the completeness and non-redundancy requirements since it identifies a range of governance capacities that are considered to be essential in terms of understanding the overall operations and performance of business organizations and its impacts on the global aims of sustainability. Moreover, this conceptualization is rather unique in that it successfully captures highly general features of business organizations while simultaneously making room for contextualist factors and complexities that in a sense relativizes these governance capacities in order to provide sufficient flexibility for different approaches to corporate sustainability, thereby achieving an important balance between contextualist and foundationalist commitments.

The Sustainable Corporation 3: Dynamic Capabilities

The third approach towards conceptualizing the sustainable corporation is grounded in the theory of the firm centered on “dynamic capabilities” (see, e.g., Helfat et al., Reference Helfat, Finkelstein, Mitchell, Peteraf, Singh, Teece and Winter2007; Nooteboom, Reference Nooteboom2022). Dynamic capabilities can be defined as “the firm’s ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external competences to address rapidly changing environments” (Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, Reference Teece, Pisano and Shuen1997: 516). On this view, in order to address the sustainability challenges that enterprises face, sustainability ought to be embedded into organizational capabilities (see, e.g., Buzzao & Rizzi, Reference Buzzao and Rizzi2021; Gelhard & von Delft, Reference Gelhard and Von Delft2016; Amui, Jabbour, de Sousa Jabbour, & Kannan, Reference Amui, Jabbour, de Sousa Jabbour and Kannan2017; Wu, He, Duan, & O’Regan, Reference Wu, He, Duan and O’Regan2012). These dynamic capabilities for corporate sustainability can moreover be disaggregated into three components, namely: 1) to scan the emerging sustainable needs of various stakeholders; 2) to identify opportunities or threats from the rapidly changing sustainable expectations; and 3) to reconfigure existing functional capabilities for sustainable development (Wu et al., Reference Wu, He, Duan and O’Regan2012: 234).

Until now, the overall contributions of the dynamic capabilities approach for corporate sustainability have been well summarized by Buzzao and Rizzi (Reference Buzzao and Rizzi2021) who identify a range of studies that have used dynamic capabilities for sustainability in order to analyze causal relationships in the fields of innovation management, strategic management, and supply chain management (Buzzao & Rizzi, Reference Buzzao and Rizzi2021: 135). In their study, Buzzao and Rizzi (Reference Buzzao and Rizzi2021: 144) moreover highlight a specific set of unique dynamic capabilities that have been identified in the literature as being relevant for realizing corporate sustainability. These include: green entrepreneurial orientation (Jiang, Chai, Shao, & Feng, Reference Jiang, Chai, Shao and Feng2018), environmental self-regulation capability (Demirel & Kesidou, Reference Demirel and Kesidou2019), ethics-focused dynamic capability (Arend, Reference Arend2013), sustainability practices in supply management (Kähkönen, Lintukangas, & Hallikas, Reference Kähkönen, Lintukangas and Hallikas2018), environmental technology capabilities (Demirel & Kesidou, Reference Demirel and Kesidou2019), and environmental training (Sarkis, Gonzalez-Torre, & Adenso-Diaz, Reference Sarkis, Gonzalez-Torre and Adenso-Diaz2010).

Since our primary focus is on understanding the concept of the sustainable corporation, we should note that Buzzao and Rizzo (Reference Buzzao and Rizzi2021: 141) introduce a crucial distinction in their study between “constitutive” and “instrumental” dimensions of dynamic capabilities for sustainability. While the dimensions concerned with an integrative, systemic concern for sustainability are labeled as constitutive, dimensions that were merely concerned with sustainability as an indirect objective key to the pursuit of economic performance or positions of competitive advantage are characterized as instrumental. This approach therefore recognizes that the constitutiveness status of dynamic capabilities is determined by its relation to the long-term, normative aims of corporate sustainability. The distinction between constitutive and instrumental dimensions of dynamic capabilities for sustainability thus guarantees that the normative core of corporate sustainability does not get “lost” while operationalizing the notion in relation to dynamic capabilities.

However, while the constitutive dimension stresses the need to eliminate the dimensions that are deemed nonessential to the (idealized) concept of the sustainable corporation, this nevertheless raises further questions about the relevant range of such dimensions that could enable conceptualizations via dynamic capabilities to satisfy the completeness requirement. This issue of completeness arguably gets indirectly addressed by Buzzao and Rizzo (Reference Buzzao and Rizzi2021: 143) when they embrace a “unifying pyramidal view” on dynamic capabilities for sustainability which involves endorsing the hierarchical understanding of dynamic capabilities (Winter, Reference Winter2003; Ambrosini & Bowman, Reference Ambrosini and Bowman2009). On this view, dynamic capabilities for sustainability can be interpreted as shaping the development of capabilities at the highest level of the capabilities hierarchy, thereby stressing the depth of embeddedness of sustainability in business organizations and their ability to modify lower order capabilities (Buzzao & Rizzo, Reference Buzzao and Rizzi2021: 143). This, moreover, makes it possible to claim that dynamic capabilities for sustainability can have a “transformative” character in realizing corporate change (Buzzao & Rizzo, Reference Buzzao and Rizzi2021: 142). Given this view, the proposition that dynamic capabilities for sustainability can deeply characterize the nature of a firm’s overall capabilities arguably gets vindicated (Buzzao & Rizzi, Reference Buzzao and Rizzi2021: 142). This claim furthermore is in fact key for our purposes since it illustrates one way in which it can be true that certain dynamic capabilities are “more” essential than others for characterizing the concept of the sustainable corporation.

At this point, the remaining issue is whether these higher-level sustainability-specific capacities are generalizable to larger groups of business organizations. Now, arguably, the generalizability of dynamic capabilities for sustainability is rather limited since they often go beyond generic dynamic capabilities constructs and thus require a much richer explanation of the contextual mechanisms that underpin them (Buzzao & Rizzi, Reference Buzzao and Rizzi2021: 143). While the upshot of this is that these specific sustainability-oriented constructs better align with systemic and long-range approaches to sustainability, thus satisfying some of the key normative concerns centered on the intergenerational dimension of sustainability (Buzzao & Rizzi, Reference Buzzao and Rizzi2021: 144), the disadvantage of this state of affairs is that the possibility of identifying the set of necessary and jointly sufficient capabilities for realizing the sustainable corporation will not be a straightforward matter. Instead, each business organization may have their own heterogeneous set of dynamic capabilities for sustainability that best characterizes a complete description of the sustainable corporation as a concept. In short, while conceptual judgments concerning the constitutive dimensions of dynamic capabilities for sustainability tackle some of the foundationalist normative issues, they tend to be operationalized in a more contextualist manner.

Conceptual Pluralism in Action

Now that we have introduced a constellation of three concrete conceptualizations of the concept of the sustainable corporation, and hence seen conceptual pluralism “in action,” it is worth stepping back and asking ourselves why these competing concepts should be considered complementary (and hence, reconcilable). I propose that one key motivation for endorsing the position of conceptual pluralism for the concept of the sustainable corporation is that we currently lack a comprehensive account that offers most of the relevant causal pathways and mechanisms that enable business corporations to robustly contribute to the (global) aims of sustainable development. Consequently, since competing conceptualizations of the sustainable corporation seem to target substantively different kinds of phenomena, it seems reasonable to suppose that these concepts may ultimately afford theorists different causal knowledge about the relevant mechanisms and motors of change.

Furthermore, each of these different conceptualizations also demonstrated in a more fine-grained manner many of the distinct normatively-infused (i.e., ethical) judgments that are invoked throughout these exercises of concept formation, which strongly shape overall corporate sustainability discourse. Thus, Bruner’s (Reference Bruner2022) governance-oriented conceptualization clearly presupposed specific normatively-significant corporate pathologies that ultimately influenced the conceptual content invoked, while the capabilities-oriented conceptualization required many concrete conceptual judgments about what should be deemed “essential” for corporate sustainability from a systemic, long-term perspective and hence should be labeled as the constitutive dimensions of the sustainable corporation. Overall, each of these conceptualizations therefore demonstrate the utility of the three-step dynamic of the empirical-normative interplay outlined earlier in this article. Finally, by putting conceptual pluralism into action, we also observed more closely the constant balancing act between contextualist and foundationalist commitments, therefore demonstrating that conceptual pluralism is in fact better able to satisfy the requirements of practical usefulness and theoretical robustness compared to the “pure” strategy of either contextualism or foundationalism.