Sustaining Unsustainability: The Legitimation Paradox of Unsustainable Companies

Abstract

Companies with inherently unsustainable business models and high public salience face a paradox, as they need to construct themselves as desirable and appropriate organizations to maintain their license to operate, while at the same time profiting from practices that are fundamentally unsustainable. This paper advances our understanding of legitimation under paradoxical conditions by examining how a highly visible and inherently unsustainable company legitimizes its unsustainability. Based on a micro-level analysis of corporate sustainability reports, press releases, and company quotes in news articles, we identify both traditional legitimation strategies and paradoxical legitimation strategies, the latter of which conflict with other legitimation strategies through tensions related to boundaries, agency, and temporality. Our findings show how paradoxical legitimation strategies enable companies to sustain their unsustainability by engaging in an ongoing oscillation between claiming sustainability and defending unsustainability.