Firms pursue third-party certification to private standards to reduce firm-level information asymmetries of certain unobservable characteristics and thus obtain legitimacy. However, when the private standard’s legitimacy dilutes, those same firms have reasons to abandon certifications...

Firms are frequently pressured by customers to obtain certification to one or more voluntary sustainability standards. However, uncertainty associated with competing voluntary sustainability standards can reduce the value of standard certifications and jeopardize the entire voluntary regulatory...

This paper examines the situation of firms that have two objectives: profit maximization and social performance. By looking comparatively at the cases of altruism, coerced egoism, and strategy, this paper uses the tools of microeconomics to define the optimal level of social output that should...

While firms have increasingly adopted environmentally and socially sustainablemanagement strategies, little is known about how these organizations react duringtimes of economic constraint. On the one hand, conventional wisdom suggests thatfirms' sustainability strategy would be de-emphasized....