This paper contributes to research on nonmarket strategy and legitimacy maintenance in contexts of weak state capacity by showing how one of the world’s largest mining firms struggled to maintain legitimacy in local communities after legitimation through nonmarket activity. Based on data collected during nine months of fieldwork in Peru’s mining industry, the article advances a theoretical model of a legitimation trap. The model encapsulates how the delivery of public goods and services to community stakeholders as nonmarket strategy raised stakeholder expectations for more nonmarket activity, forcing the firm to sustain nonmarket activity solely to maintain legitimacy and avoid community opposition. The paper also shows how the private delivery of public goods and services instead of the state eroded state legitimacy in terms of public goods and services delivery in the communities, increasing legitimacy maintenance pressure on the firm. These findings have implications for how we study firms operating in contexts of low state capacity, and what roles firms can sustainably play instead of states.

Although sustainability certifications are widespread, the challenges confronting the sustainability certification organizations (SCOs) who develop, promote and administer such certifications have received less attention. We argue that SCOs face three task domains: legitimacy management, organizational learning, and stakeholder engagement. Critically, these domains are interdependent; a preoccupation with one domain poses limitations on the others. First, an emphasis on legitimacy management can inhibit organizational learning, leading to the advocacy trap. Second, an emphasis on stakeholder engagement can inhibit learning processes, leading to the inertia trap. Third, an emphasis on legitimacy management can inhibit stakeholder engagement, leading to the mobilization trap. Collectively, these challenges constitute the trap triangle. Building on our theoretical model, we develop propositions about how SCOs fall into these traps and how they can overcome them. Finally, recognizing SCOs vary in terms of their movement, market or mission orientations leads to propositions about the traps each type of SCO is most likely to fall into. We close the article by discussing our contributions to the literature on sustainability certifications and environmental governance.

Issue fields are dynamic arenas where actors converge to address shared issues, seek- ing consensus through field settlements established by public or private actors at local or global levels. In fields tackling grand challenges like climate change, global settlements are often advocated to harmonize efforts across jurisdictions. While prior research has explored settlement constellations and field evolution, we know surprisingly little about how global settlements shape the emergence and trajectory of issue fields. Drawing on a historical study of the carbon offsetting field, we examine how the Clean Devel- opment Mechanism (CDM) catalysed the field’s emergence by providing foundational structures and legitimacy while also triggering fragmentation, governance gaps, and field de-legitimation. We highlight how governance mechanisms were adapted to these challenges, ultimately driving settlement convergence and field stabilization. By doing so, we advance our understanding of global settlements as both enablers and disrup- tors, showing how they foster legitimacy and practices while simultaneously fuelling fragmentation, reshaping fields, and their ability to address grand challenges.