Maintaining Moral Legitimacy through Worlds and Words: An Explanation of Firms' Investment in Sustainability Certification
研究咖啡、茶和巧克力行业企业为何投资可持续认证存在差异，发现依赖“家庭世界”原则的企业更不愿投资，且家族控制代际影响该关系。
Abstract A prominent way for firms to manage their moral legitimacy is to invest in sustainability certifications. However, a significant subset of firms remain reluctant to invest in sustainability certifications even decades after the establishment of such certifications. Our paper seeks to elucidate this variance by exploring how firms in the coffee, tea, and chocolate industries legitimise themselves on moral grounds through external communication to stakeholders. Drawing on insights from French Pragmatist Sociology, we suggest that firms primarily rely on two distinct sets of legitimacy principles that reflect their identity orientation: the ‘civic and green’ world and the ‘domestic’ world. Specifically, our results show that reliance on the domestic world is negatively related to firms' investment in sustainability certifications. Our findings also suggest that the strength of the relationship between these distinct methods of moral legitimising and certification varies depending on whether firms are characterised by first‐ or multi‐generation family control.