This chapter examines how ESG ratings increasingly function as de facto signals of stakeholder approval despite being designed as investment risk tools. Through an original synthesis of trust theory, legitimacy studies, and signaling theory, it demonstrates how ratings operate as institutional “trust shortcuts” that project legitimacy without the relational embeddedness that authentic social license demands. Analysis of the ESG rating industry’s structural features— methodological opacity, market fragmentation, and commercial incentives—reveals how these metrics acquire interpretive authority despite their inconsistency. Drawing on illustrative cases, the chapter shows how ESG ratings enable a form of “procedural misrecognition” where standardized metrics displace situated dialogue. The argument challenges “governing by numbers” approaches and presents a pathway for reconceptualizing how legitimacy is constructed and contested in contemporary corporate accountability.