In Search of the Dominant Rationale in Sustainability Management: Legitimacy- or Profit-Seeking? Stefan Schaltegger 1 • Jacob Ho ¨risch 1,2 Received: 7 April 2015 / Accepted: 8 September 2015 / Published online: 8 October 2015 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015 Abstract The academic debate why and how companies are dealing with sustainability is dominated by two main arguments—the profit-seeking and the legitimacy-seeking view. While the first argues that companies (only) establish sustainability management measures if this helps to increase their economic success, others emphasize that companies predominantly react on societal pressure dealing with sus- tainability (only) to secure legitimacy. Whereas both lines of argument have gained a lot of attention in academia, little is known about their relative importance in shaping corporate practice. This papers aims to fill this gap with an empirical analysis of corporate practices of large companies in ten countries worldwide. To capture the organizations’ rationale in sustainability management practice, we systematically applied various measures related to actors and operational activities focusing on the companies’ intention to pursue sustainability management, the integration of sustainability management to the core business, and the actual imple- mentation of related measures. Overall the findings indicate that seeking legitimacy dominates corporate sustainability management practices. Keywords Sustainability management Á Legitimacy Á Profit-seeking Á Corporate sustainability Á Sustainability management practices Introduction The paradigm of sustainability has been established as a common goal for political, societal, and economic devel- opment. Sustainable development describes a ‘‘develop- ment which meets the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’’ (WCED 1987). Despite the growing attention the sustainability paradigm gains, many problems related to sustainability, including global warming (IPCC 2008), overfishing of seas, accelerated loss of biodiversity (IUCN 2008; WWF 2010), demographic change (OECD 2012), and large inequalities in income and health (e.g., Marmot 2005; UNDP 2010) are rather deteriorating than improving. Many of these problems are direct results of industrial and commercial activities (e.g., Heede 2014). Managers are thus challenged to deal with sustainability while at the same time being responsible for the wellbeing of their organisation. In principle, corporate sustainability management aims at reducing negative social and envi- ronmental impacts and contributing to sustainable devel- opment. Corporate sustainability activities are, however, planned and implemented in the organizational context of the corporation. In practice, corporate sustainability man- agement is therefore embedded in the context of economic competitiveness and the societal business environment (e.g., van Marrewijk 2003). This raises the question as to what organizational rationale shapes sustainability man- agement practice. The academic debate about reasons why companies are dealing with sustainability and what influences the design of their sustainability activities is dominated by two main arguments. The first view (e.g., Revell et al. 2010; Gao and Bansal 2013), frequently labeled as ‘profit-seeking’ assumes that companies establish sustainability management (only) if & Stefan Schaltegger schaltegger@uni.leuphana.de Jacob Ho ¨risch Jacob.hoerisch@alanus.edu 1 Centre for Sustainability Management (CSM), Leuphana University Lu ¨neburg, Scharnhorststr. 1, 21335 Lu ¨neburg, Germany 2 Alanus University, Villestr. 3, 53347 Alfter, Germany 123 J Bus Ethics (2017) 145:259–276 DOI 10.1007/s10551-015-2854-3