**6. Conclusion and prospect**

Organizations express their intentions explicitly through their goals, visions, mission, values, etc.; these organizational intentions (goals, visions, mission, values, etc.) are enriched with value propositions that seek to provide solutions in exchange for economic benefits. In actualizing these organizational intentions, organizations utilize strategies that avail them the opportunity to continually be relevant in their competitive landscape, enlarge their market share, and possibly lead their industry in optimizing the actualization of their intent.

Over time, the essence of profit optimization for the exclusive benefit of shareholders has been reviewed by third-party actors (stakeholders) who hold organizations to a higher standard that seeks to redefine organizations' intention to include elements that promote the interest of stakeholders (i.e. especially host society) interest, with a ripple effect of positively influencing the organizations' impression before its stakeholders, which translate to an approved legitimacy status and eventually favorable operational terms offered to those organization from their stakeholders.

Irrespective of the argument for or against the involvement of organizations engaging in CSR, organizations are entities with the capacity to independently take actions. Organizations naturally seek resources from their host society and are expected to reciprocate via the engagement of beneficial and sustainable practices that aligns with the societal value system, as well as promote the positive advancement of the society. Alternatively, organizations may possess an advanced or superior value system and independently initiate CSR as a strategic path-finder and responsible partner in promoting social issues; hence, such organizations are proactive in generally advancing fairness, progress, and social development. Irrespective of the motive for the engagement of CSR by organizations, organizations primarily as legal entities anchored on economic interest usually establish how their involvement in CSR will eventually advance their primary economic interest to ensure the sustainability of such CSR engagement.

Theoretically, this study advances a detailed theoretical discourse and knowledge enrichment for a direct association between CSR and the ethics of legitimacy. The paucity of studies that have established this direct link makes this study a beneficial tool for advancing the knowledge base on the topic and also raises the curiosity for further discourse on the research theme. Also, its exploration within the purview of the dynamic capability theory further draws a niche for the study and fortifies the study's relevance in offering strategic insight into the association between CSR and the ethics of legitimacy.

The study's practical implication is anchored on the strategic and applicable understanding it offers to organizations' management, whose adoption of its precepts provides sufficient potential for advancing organizational strategic intent which aligns with societal values and promotes their legitimacy.

The prospect of CSR in its ethical navigation to legitimacy is one in which the government will eventually exercise some level of control and regulations; this is because the organizational quest for legitimacy will no longer be linked to the exclusive consolidation of their economic interest, but may intermediate with other mediating

*Corporate Social Responsibility: The Ethics of Legitimacy DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104805*

agendas that are of interest to the government and national sovereignty. Hence, an evolving conceptualization of CSR engagements, as organizations begin to explore the avalanche of opportunities they can influence as non-primary actors in sectors that are beyond their economic interest.
