Motivations for environmental and social consciousness: Reevaluating the sustainability-based view

•Sustainability has failed to become mainstream.•We reexamine sustainability through the luxury lens.•We identify and delineate four motivations for firms to engage in sustainability.•Introducing the Awareness-Motivation-Capabilities Framework to sustainability.•We provide suggestions for managers to escape untenable sustainability strategies.

Corporate sustainability is often articulated as a top strategic priority, equal in importance to corporate social and financial objectives. Companies have, however, struggled to implement profitable sustainability programs. Therefore, the objective of this manuscript is to evaluate the impediments to the design and adoption of viable corporate sustainability programs. An inductive research design that involved 28 in-depth interviews was employed to identify and delineate four manifest motivations for corporate sustainability initiatives. The inductive process helped derive each motivation's mechanisms, outcomes, and limitations. Theoretically, the manuscript explicates how core and augmented value propositions impel or impede the development of corporate sustainability capabilities. The manuscript further defines under which circumstances commitment and capability coincide to promote the long-term viability of a sustainability program. Managerially, the manuscript provides sensible suggestions to help decision makers 1) assess their firm's readiness to pursue corporate sustainability and 2) avoid untenable sustainability strategies.