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Improving corporate sustainability can cause paradoxical tensions whose management depends greatly on cognitive and emotional factors. In small businesses (SBs), collective environmental management systems (EMS) also seem to comfort managers in their choice of action by making them feel psychologically safe. We thus analyze the role that this reassuring effect can play in the management of sustainability tensions through the prism of paradox theory. To this end, two complementary studies (one qualitative and one quantitative) were carried out among SB leaders in collective EMS who work in the agriculture sector, where sustainability problems are particularly salient. While the qualitative results highlight how collective EMS enable leaders to feel more serene, the quantitative results show how these gains in serenity foster more constructive and effective management of sustainability tensions. Thus, this research opens up new perspectives for the study of the levers of paradoxical management and responsible action in SBs.