In global competitive conditions, companies are trying to obtain long-term competitive advantages by reducing the development time of their new products, which depends on increasing the absorption capacity, which has caused more innovation in the company and leads to an increase in economic added value. Also, for the long-term success of the company, corporate sustainability seems necessary and creates potential capacity for investors in creating transparency and reliability of information. The purpose of this research is to investigate the role of absorptive capacity on the relationship between sustainability performance based on legitimacy theory and economic criteria of financial performance in economic enterprises. The current research is a type of causal (post-event) research that examines the relationship between two or more independent variables and a dependent variable. The statistical population of the research is the companies admitted to the Tehran Stock Exchange in the period from 2012 to 2014, and 167 companies (1670 company-years) were selected using the screening method. The information required for the research was collected through the study of library sources and the multivariable linear regression method was used to test the research hypotheses. The results of the analysis of the empirical model, the results of the research showed that the performance of corporate sustainability has a positive and significant effect on the economic criteria of financial performance (economic and market added value) and also strengthens the capacity to absorb the positive effect between the performance of corporate sustainability and the economic criteria of financial performance. does