Corporate Social Responsibility: The Ethics of Legitimacy

Organizations are consistently optimizing their opportunities to advance their goals, advantages, and relevance in the global market landscape; among the options utilized in the advancement of such strategic intent are the tool of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a strategy in social-economic engagement. Notwithstanding the universal applicability of CSR and its benefits to organizations, its engagement still raises subtle curiosity as to the ethics of gaining legitimacy from stakeholders. Hence, this chapter seeks to qualitatively (narrative literature review methodology) explore the dynamics of ethics in legitimacy quest through CSR and makes postulation on the prospect of CSR in sustaining business engagement. The study postulates that the prospect of CSR in its ethical navigation to legitimacy is one in which the government will eventually exercise some level of control and regulations; this is because the organizational quest for legitimacy will no longer be linked to the exclusive consolidation of their economic interest, but may intermediate with other mediating agendas that are of interest to the government and national sovereignty. Hence, an evolving conceptualization of CSR engagements, as organizations begins to explore the avalanche of opportunities they can influence as non-primary actors in sectors that are beyond their economic interest.