ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book first demonstrates the breadth of approaches researchers use to examine Corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication thereby exposing the ways in which CSR is ubiquitous, contested, and elusive. It then offers a pathway to understand how the boundaries of CSR practice are created and maintained through communication. The book interrogates how organizational characteristics influence CSR practice and communication, and examines the connection between organizational sector and size and CSR communication. It articulates how the functional differences of organizations operating in stigmatized industries impact CSR practices and communication. The book also explores the external factors that inform CSR communication. It offers empirical evidence from a three condition experiment using non-fictitious CSR sports partnerships to advance a new scale to measure legitimacy. The book ends with a conversation about the future of CSR communication research between four advanced doctoral students.
