• Synthesis

• External Shocks
• Spillovers

• Reconciling stakeholder interests
• Reshaping organizational forms
• Shared responsibility and sustainable cooperation

In the business ethics and management literature, it is widely recognized that corporate sustainability is a complex concept that remains strongly contested. While some scholars highlight the current utility of the concept when used contextually, others claim that new conceptual foundations must be sought in order to improve the concept. In this article, I argue that these contextualist and foundationalist strategies for conceptualizing corporate sustainability can be made compatible since they often operate at different levels of abstraction and/or idealization. This position requires, however, accepting the reality of a plurality of competing concepts of corporate sustainability. I demonstrate the value of conceptual pluralism by discussing three competing, though complementary, concepts of the ‘sustainable corporation’ which appeal to high-level principles, governance capacities, and dynamic capabilities, respectively. I conclude with some reflections on the implications of conceptual pluralism as it relates to the interplay between empirical and normative theorizing.

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