Are business students buying it? A theoretical framework for measuring attitudes toward the legitimacy of environmental sustainability

Environmental sustainability has begun to penetrate the business school curriculum. Whether it ultimately becomes a key component of managerial decision‐making models will depend upon whether it is perceived as legitimate within the context of profit‐making enterprises. This paper draws upon the cognitive psychology and organizational legitimacy literatures to develop a conceptual framework for operationalizing perceived legitimacy. This framework can be used to develop survey instruments and simulations that evaluate the effectiveness of various pedagogical approaches to integrating sustainability into business school curricula.