Corporate responsibility communication nowadays unfolds under conditions of intensified evaluation. Stakeholders rarely encounter responsibility claims as neutral statements of intent; instead, they interpret such claims as propositions that must be assessed for plausibility, evidentiary strength, and alignment with wider expectations. In this environment, corporate responsibility communication becomes less about projection and more about negotiation: organizations communicate responsibility, audiences’ judge credibility, and legitimacy becomes a conditional outcome rather than an automatic reward. The focus of this editorial is on credibility and legitimacy to make sense of how corporate responsibility communication is evaluated under contemporary conditions. This is how I read the articles we present in this issue.
Rather than treating corporate responsibility communication as a neutral reporting exercise, I read it through the problem of credibility. Credibility is implicated in how organizations frame sustainability messages, how audiences interpret motive and authenticity, and how responsibility claims are evaluated when they appear to demand behavioral change or public endorsement. Under these conditions, responsibility communication becomes a site of scrutiny, where legitimacy is shaped by whether responsibility claims are seen as meaningful and defensible rather than merely declarative.
Legitimacy provides a useful frame for understanding corporate responsibility communication. Legitimacy can be understood as a generalized perception or assumption that an organization's actions are appropriate within “socially constructed systems of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions” (Suchman, 1995, p. 574). This definition matters because it places legitimacy outside the organization itself, which means that legitimacy is not merely asserted but conferred through social evaluation (Deephouse et al., 2017). Legitimacy is also closely tied to how organizations are understood and interpreted. Audiences perceive legitimate organizations not only as worthy, but also as more meaningful, predictable, and trustworthy; legitimacy, therefore, depends partly on whether a credible account exists for what an organization is doing and why (Suchman, 1995).
Credibility reflects the reality that responsible communication often operates under conditions of limited stakeholder access to direct verification of performance. As Bowen and Aragon-Correa (2014) argue, stakeholders often cannot evaluate firms' environmental performance directly, which creates reliance on organizations to signal environmental quality via reports, advertising, websites, and certification schemes. Under such conditions, increases in disclosure without substantive improvements can generate justifiable skepticism about the gap between what firms say and what they actually do (Bowen and Aragon-Correa, 2014).
Legitimacy is not produced by organizational self-description alone but by interpretive judgment, and this makes credibility a key intermediary. When stakeholders cannot easily verify performance, they rely on signals and cues embedded in corporate communication, reporting practices, and reputational histories. In contemporary responsibility contexts, even minor discrepancies may be treated as meaningful because they invite re-interpretation of organizational motives and authenticity.
Greenwashing research illustrates why credibility has become central to responsibility communication. Greenwashing refers to misleading stakeholders regarding environmental practices or the environmental benefits of products and services (Delmas and Burbano, 2011; Topić, 2021). Its incidence is not merely an ethical problem at the level of individual organizations; it can also have systemic consequences for corporate responsibility communication more broadly. Delmas and Burbano (2011) note that greenwashing can erode consumer confidence in green products and negatively affect investor confidence in environmentally friendly firms. When responsibility communication is perceived as performative or strategically selective, credibility becomes difficult to sustain, and reputational vulnerability increases (Bowen and Aragon-Correa, 2014; Delmas and Burbano, 2011).
Beyond informational asymmetry and reputational signaling, credibility tensions can also be understood sociologically. From a Bourdieusian perspective, these dynamics can be interpreted as struggles over symbolic power: the power to define what responsibility is, what evidence counts, and whose evaluation matters (Bourdieu, 1991, 1993). Responsible communication is not only judged on its content, but also on whether it aligns with the taken-for-granted norms of a given field and whether it resonates with the evaluative frameworks of different publics. When responsibility claims circulate across audiences that do not share the same assumptions, credibility becomes fragile, and legitimacy becomes conditional (Deephouse et al., 2017). Misalignment, then, can be read as a field-level coordination problem, where the organization's preferred categories of justification fail to travel.
Legitimacy also highlights why responsible communication is not only about persuasion, but about organizational survival and the conditions of operating acceptance. Legitimacy must be obtained and maintained, and where perceived behavior is incongruent with societal expectations, legitimacy crises may arise (García-Meca et al., 2024). When legitimacy is threatened, organizations may need to take actions intended to repair it (García-Meca et al., 2024). Importantly, organizations may adopt credibility-linked mechanisms as part of legitimacy management. García-Meca et al. (2024) show that in response to legitimacy threats associated with negative media coverage of ESG misconduct, companies may use the assurance of sustainability information as an instrument to aid legitimacy repair.
At the same time, credibility-enhancing practices may not always be substantive. Legitimacy theory highlights that organizations may respond to legitimacy threats through symbolic activities designed to create impressions and achieve societal support rather than meaningful change (García-Meca et al., 2024). In sustainability contexts, assurance may be adopted symbolically in ways that function as impression management—or even as a form of “greenwashing”—where independence is limited, or engagement is superficial (García-Meca et al., 2024). This tension between substantive credibility-building and symbolic credibility-performance is central to understanding why responsible communication is increasingly “under scrutiny”: evaluation does not focus only on the claim, but also on the perceived authenticity of the practices surrounding the claim (Bowen and Aragon-Correa, 2014).
Contemporary legitimacy scholarship also emphasizes that legitimacy is conferred by multiple sources using different routines and evaluative criteria, including institutions in organizational fields, the media, individuals, investors, and social movements (Deephouse et al., 2017). Legitimacy, therefore, becomes potentially contested; inconsistent prescriptions may arise, and debates may unfold in public settings (Deephouse et al., 2017). Under such conditions, credibility is not a single organizational attribute. It is a judgment formed across audiences and contexts, where corporate responsibility communication is assessed against shifting expectations and competing interpretations.
For corporate responsibility communication, the implication is clear. Organizations cannot assume that adopting the language of responsibility will secure legitimacy, particularly in environments where stakeholders rely on signals rather than direct verification (Bowen and Aragon-Correa, 2014), where greenwashing can reduce confidence (Delmas and Burbano, 2011), and where media-driven legitimacy threats can prompt strategic responses aimed at repair (García-Meca et al., 2024). Credibility becomes the key intermediary condition: organizations may attempt to signal responsibility in ways intended to appear trustworthy, while audiences increasingly interpret and test such signals under conditions of skepticism and heightened scrutiny (Bowen and Aragon-Correa, 2014; Suchman, 1995).
This issue of the Corporate Communications journal also highlights that scrutiny is not confined to environmental communication. This matters because responsibility is increasingly communicated across multiple domains that do not share a single standard of proof or a single moral vocabulary. As responsibility expands across environmental, social, and organizational terrains, the interpretive burden placed on corporate communication grows: responsibility claims must not only be communicated, but made socially convincing across different publics. Corporate responsibility communication is increasingly evaluated across a broader social terrain, including inclusion, workplace relationships, and organizational commitments to contested social issues. In such settings, audiences respond not only to the content of corporate statements, but to the implied distribution of responsibility: who is acting, who is asked to participate, and what counts as evidence of commitment.
At the same time, credibility is shaped by communication design choices. Communication design choices become important because they shape the inferences audiences draw about organizational intent. Framing, specificity, and the implied relationship between message and action influence whether responsible communication is read as accountable and grounded, or as performative and strategically vague. The framing of sustainability messages and the strategic sequencing of authenticity cues influence whether stakeholders interpret responsibility claims as meaningful, persuasive, and relationship-building, or as ineffective and even counterproductive. This reinforces that credibility is not simply a reputational asset but a communication outcome that can be strengthened or weakened through message construction, context, and prior organizational standing.
Taken together, the scholarship presented in this issue of the journal points to a straightforward conclusion: corporate responsibility communication is increasingly a site where legitimacy is negotiated under conditions of limited verification, reputational risk, and contested expectations. Legitimacy depends on social evaluation and credible accounts (Suchman, 1995), is conferred through multiple sources and shifting criteria (Deephouse et al., 2017), and may be threatened when organizations are perceived as misaligned with societal expectations (García-Meca et al., 2024). In such contexts, credibility is not merely persuasive power; it is a condition upon which corporate legitimacy increasingly depends (Suchman, 1995).
Future research can build on these insights by examining how credibility is constructed, contested, and repaired across different responsibility domains and communication environments. In particular, there is a need to better understand how responsibility claims travel across audiences that operate with distinct evaluative expectations, how symbolic and substantive credibility practices interact over time, and how legitimacy judgments evolve in digitally mediated and socially contested contexts. For practitioners, the implications are equally significant. Responsible communication can no longer rely on disclosure volume, symbolic signaling, or narrative alignment alone; instead, it must demonstrate coherence between message, action, and accountability in ways that remain intelligible across multiple publics. Organizations that treat credibility as a strategic asset embedded in governance, transparency, and long-term engagement, rather than as a short-term reputational tactic, are more likely to sustain legitimacy under conditions of scrutiny. Continued dialogue between scholarship and industry practice is, therefore, essential for clarifying how corporate responsibility communication can contribute not only to reputational positioning but to durable and socially recognized legitimacy.
