Organizational Identity and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Legitimation

This chapter addresses the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) legitimation and organizational identity. The purpose is to examine through the lens of organizational identity the tendency for modern organizations to seek legitimacy as socially and environmentally responsible actors and become associated with values such as sustainability and altruism. Specifically, the chapter highlights the CSR legitimation implications of the tendencies for business organizations to seek a normative organizational identity despite having a predominantly utilitarian identity and government organizations to seek a utilitarian identity despite having a predominantly normative identity. These identity category dynamics, it is argued here, shed light on why organizations promote themselves as socially and environmentally responsible in order to acquire and maintain legitimacy. The argument is that CSR legitimation should not be seen in isolation from important identity questions such as “what are we” and “what do we want to be.”