Cynthia Loos

• Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) professionals play a critical role in integrating sustainability within organizations, responding to complex global challenges, and navigating multifaceted organizational dynamics. This dissertation explores the occupational landscape of CSR professionals through the lens of legitimacy. It adopts a multi-dimensional approach, analyzing emerging themes, challenges, and strategies to illuminate the complex dynamics shaping their roles. The first study systematically reviews existing literature to map the evolving landscape of CSR professionals, identifying four primary research foci: economic, political, and socio-cultural environment; organizational dynamics; occupational characteristics; and individual-level psychological dynamics. The second study employs qualitative methods to examine how CSR professionals cultivate internal legitimacy within organizations, unveiling key strategies and their relationship to occupational self-perception. The third study develops and validates a corporate profession legitimacy (CPL) scale, providing a robust tool for measuring the legitimacy of corporate professions and offering insights into the legitimization processes of CSR roles. By integrating perspectives from CSR, professionalization, and legitimacy theory, this research contributes to a nuanced understanding of CSR professionals' strategies, challenges, and impacts. It advances the academic discourse on modern management occupations and provides actionable insights for organizations aiming to enhance the effectiveness and acceptance of CSR initiatives. Furthermore, the findings offer a foundation for future research into the professionalization and legitimacy of emerging corporate roles in a globalized context.