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CSR COMMUNICATIONS AS LEGITIMACY-SEEKING STRATEGIES: A FRAMEWORK FOR A COMPARATIVE UNDERSTANDING OF DIFFERENCES AT CROSS-REGIONAL AND INDUSTRY LEVELS.

The research proposal is based on the fact that legitimacy strategies are therefore the result of concurrent and partially overlapping effects of the different rhetorical strategies and co-exist in real-world settings (Suchman, 1995). Multiple legitimation is generally reputed as the most effective form of legitimation (Vaary & Tienari, 2008). The purpose of this research project is thus to explore differences in legitimacy-seeking strategies as they appear in current practices of CSR communication rather than strictly associate each communication strategy with fixed effects in terms of legitimacy.Starting from Castelló and Galang’s (2014) classification, the research intends to identify different types of CSR rhetorical approaches adopted frequently as legitimacy strategies, each of them characterized by specific CSR messages and distinct theoretical approach (institutionalism, political theory, public relation theory and strategic management).Moreover, previous studies showed that how CSR is communicated is related to the specific cultural and social contexts (Chapple & Moon, 2005; Campbell, 2007) as well to dissimilarities in firms' characteristics, such as the nature of the industry (service vs product), the public visibility and the controversial nature of companies' core activities. Researchers found that emerging countries may present different priorities in their CSR agenda compared with Western countries (Visser, 2008; Jamali et al., 2017). However, few of these have explored the differences of CSR communication strategies at a global level and associated them to the ways legitimation strategies have been put forward. This research thus supports the argument that there is global convergence toward general CSR pattern in institutional domain but other differences are present in CSR rhetorical strategies. In particular, we investigates if these strategies differ across world regions and on the basis of specific industry firms belong to (service vs product) to determine which type is prevalent and why.