Oscillatory Legitimacy in Sustainability: Navigating Polarized Stakeholder Evaluations

ABSTRACT In contexts of heightened moral and institutional pluralism, corporate sustainability strategy is evaluated through divergent and often polarized stakeholder lenses. Under such conditions, the relationship between sustainability and business performance becomes a contested terrain of interpretation rather than a settled strategic fact. This article introduces the concept of oscillatory legitimacy to explain how organizations sustain credibility when legitimacy cannot be stabilized within a single evaluative frame. Oscillatory legitimacy conceptualizes legitimacy not as a reservoir of support, but as a dynamic process of movement across incompatible moral and pragmatic evaluations. Rather than reflecting deliberate strategic alternation, this movement is introduced by the structure of polarized stakeholder judgments, through which organizations are differently recognized as legitimate across audiences and over time. Drawing on legitimacy and stakeholder theory, the article develops a two‐dimensional framework centered on compatibility—the perceived strategic fit of sustainability—and interdependence—the perceived moral inseparability of sustainability from legitimate corporate purpose. Crossing these dimensions yields four ideal‐typical legitimacy configurations—integrative, instrumental, fragmented, and contested—and reveals patterned trajectories through which organizations navigate shifting expectations. Reframing legitimacy as oscillatory, the framework advances sustainability strategy research and demonstrates how credibility is sustained through movement rather than alignment in a polarized environment, with important implications for the depth and durability of sustainability outcomes.