The adoption of sustainability standards within organizations represents one of the most significant challenges that firms face. This qualitative based study draws on the core-periphery thesis of organizational change by Siggelkow (2002) and the resource-based view of the firm to explore the three adoption architectures firms can use to integrate green certification scheme standards into their business operations. As a result, we examined the nature of the linkages between the different adoption mechanisms, and how such linkages might influence a firm’s sustainability performance. The study demonstrates that organizational attributes, previous experience with a sustainability agenda and the degree of fit between the externally generated sustainability standard and the prevailing business practices can affect the abilities of firms to integrate sustainability standards into their organization structures and thus their sustainability performance. Hence, this paper opens new avenues for sustainability certification researchers to look at the various configurations of standards adoption architectures, and also for practitioners to broadly embrace both institutional and organizational exigencies relevant to the internalization of certification standards.

组织内部采用可持续发展标准是企业面临的最重大挑战之一。这项基于定性的研究借鉴了Siggelkow（2002）提出的组织变革的核心思想和公司基于资源的观点，以探索公司可用于将绿色认证计划标准整合到其业务运营中的三种采用架构。结果，我们研究了不同采用机制之间的联系的性质，以及这种联系如何影响企业的可持续发展绩效。研究表明，组织属性 以往关于可持续发展议程的经验以及外部产生的可持续发展标准与现行商业惯例之间的契合度会影响企业将可持续发展标准纳入其组织结构的能力，从而影响其可持续发展绩效。因此，本文为可持续性认证研究人员研究标准采用体系结构的各种配置，以及从业人员广泛接受与认证标准内部化有关的机构和组织需求提供了新途径。