Summary

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) managers often struggle to gain legitimacy within their organizations, even though they are tasked with implementing important sustainability initiatives. Our research sheds light on CSR managers’ challenges, their strategies to overcome them, and how individual characteristics shape their approach. The findings help us to disentangle what may appear as a legitimacy jungle, revealing hidden obstacles and the lack of a straightforward path toward achieving sustainable goals.

What we studied and why it matters?

Our new study “The Why, How, and When of CSR Managers’ Internal Legitimation Strategies,” published by the Journal of Management Studies, takes the following paradox as its starting point:

while organizations increasingly rely on CSR to gain external legitimacy, the very people responsible for implementing CSR – the CSR managers – often lack legitimacy internally. This impedes their ability to drive meaningful change and raises important questions about the factors hindering CSR implementation from within. Our research takes an individual perspective to understand the lived experiences of CSR managers. In 2020, we approached German CSR managers across various sectors to ask them about the challenges they experience in their daily work.

What did we find?

Uncovering the Challenges

CSR managers navigate a multifaceted landscape of challenges in their daily business life. From skepticism and adverse attitudes to interpersonal conflicts and resistance, they must skillfully maneuver through a complex web of human obstacles. Resource constraints and structural hurdles further complicate their efforts, as they often need more human and financial capital to drive change.

What’s more, the content of their work—driving and implementing more sustainability in their organization—presents challenges. CSR managers must grapple with the inherent difficulties of measuring impact, assessing costs and benefits, and aligning sustainability goals with the organization’s core objectives. They are tasked with integrating sustainability into the organization’s very fabric, often in the face of conflicting priorities and established ways of thinking.

A Repertoire of Legitimation Strategies

To navigate this challenging terrain, the CSR managers we interviewed draw upon various legitimation strategies. They carefully select and adapt their approach to the unique demands of each situation. Sometimes, their focus lies on providing tangible benefits, demonstrating how sustainability initiatives can meet stakeholder interests and help achieve organizational goals. In other moments, CSR managers exert coercion, leveraging legal requirements and power structures to drive compliance.

Strategies involving emotion and values also play a decisive role. By establishing a commitment to internal or external stakeholders, CSR managers build affective connections with them that can weather the storms of change. They link sustainability to the organization’s core values, tapping into the intrinsic motivation of employees and stakeholders alike.

Throughout it all, CSR managers strive to create comprehensibility, making the complex world of sustainability accessible and understandable to all. They act as translators and educators, bridging the technical and human gap.

The Role of Individual Characteristics

Importantly, our study finds that a CSR manager’s occupational self-perception – how they see their role and purpose – significantly shapes which challenges they perceive and which legitimation strategies they employ. To show the interlink between challenges and legitimation, we clustered the CSR managers of our sample into the following types (see Table 1 in our article): Whether they view themselves as a) strategists, b) change agents, c) collaborators, or d) facilitators, this self-perception acts as a lens through which they approach their work. It influences the obstacles they encounter and their tactics to overcome them. Each self-perception brings with it a unique set of challenges and a tailored arsenal of strategies. By understanding and embracing their identity, CSR managers can more effectively navigate the legitimacy landscape and drive meaningful change.

For example, strategists (a), closely aligned with top management and decision-making, must navigate the gap between strategic objectives and operational realities. As a result, they face significant interpersonal and stakeholder engagement challenges and use specific legitimation strategies, such as demonstrating benefits to address them. Change agents (b), due to their proactive efforts to drive transformative change, often face attitudinal conflicts. Still, their self-perception encourages them to adopt legitimation strategies regarding values and impact to address these challenges head-on. Collaborators (c) work across various functions and struggle with being perceived as non-experts through attitudinal challenges, so their legitimation strategies must establish their credibility and influence. Facilitators (d), who handle the groundwork for CSR initiatives, encounter more structural challenges and, therefore, require legitimation strategies to overcome operational obstacles and successfully implement CSR practices, such as executing coercion.

Lessons for the Journey

Our study aims to inspire practitioners, either as CSR managers or in other roles, to embark on their own sustainability journey within organizations. Our findings highlight the importance of adaptability, tailoring one’s legitimation approach to the specific demands of the situation and organization. They also stress the power of emotion and values in driving sustainable change.

However, our study emphasizes the critical role of self-awareness and self-perception. By understanding their identity and purpose, CSR managers can more effectively navigate their challenges and drive the change they seek, just as Ava Max sings in “Choose your fighter.”

So, let us take these lessons to heart as we set out on our own sustainability journey in companies large and small, public sector organizations, and more. Let us embrace the complexity, draw upon a diverse range of strategies, and never lose sight of the transformative power of our own self-perception. Only by skillfully navigating the legitimacy jungle can we hope to build a more sustainable future for all.