Sustainability and green consulting industry: institutionalizing a corporate response

Abstract

This article analyzes how the growing demand for sustainability in response to the socio-environmental crisis has shaped a market-driven response led by corporate actors, particularly major consulting firms. Drawing on a qualitative approach based on interviews, document analysis, and digital environments, it examines the consolidation of a multilateral architecture promoted by organizations such as the UN, ILO, and OECD, and its articulation with a sustainability industry that translates these guidelines into “green” goods and services. Within this framework, green consulting plays a central role in the interpretation, standardization, and certification of sustainable practices. The analysis shows how sustainability functions simultaneously as a symbolic and economic good, whose circulation structures new forms of competition, differentiation, and legitimation within contemporary capitalism. The article thus contributes to understanding the institutionalization of sustainability as a field of normative, symbolic, and commercial struggles.