Exploring the market side of corporate environmentalism: Reputation, legitimacy and stakeholders' engagement

Corporate environmentalism and proactive environmental strategies should be carried out based on complementary organizational resources and capabilities. Traditionally, Strategy and Management literature has put the focus on the technical, operational, and managerial side of these new sustainable business models. In this research, I put the focus on the complimentary market-based positioning capabilities side, where reputation and legitimacy, as well as related issues, such as corporate image and branding, play a key complementary and leverage role in the implementation of successful new sustainable business models. Different contributions made on this topic reinforce the necessity of an effective and deeper external stakeholders' engagement to develop sucessful proactive corporate environmentalism and market-based positioning capabilities in the context of B2B and industrial markets.