Corporate reputation in the People’s Republic of China: A B2B perspective

How B2B firms in the People's Republic of China [PRC] view, value and manage their corporate reputation has received little research attention. Drawing on multiple case studies, our findings confirm that firms are utilizing certain Western conceptualizations of corporate reputation, including the leveraging of intangible forms of corporate reputation. However, many of the firms were also using the hitherto underemphasized elements of firm-government relationships and government regulatory policies to create positive assessments of a firm's reputation among key stakeholders. Notwithstanding our findings that corporate reputation is valued as a means of gaining competitive advantage and dispelling perceptions that Chinese products/services are low-cost and low-quality, concern remains that building reputation capital among stakeholders may result in a loss of price competitiveness. Finally, unlike the framework proposed by Barnett, Jermier, and Lafferty (2006), our results suggest that B2B firms in China do not impose clear boundaries between reputation and ‘corporate reputation capital’. Nor does there appear to be an emphasis on disaggregating the constructs of identify and image from that of reputation.     

Implications for food production, land use and rural development of the European Union’s Single Farm Payment: Indications from a survey of farmers’ intentions in Germany, Portugal and the UK

The 2003 reform of the European Union’s (EU) Common Agricultural Policy introduced a decoupled income support for farmers called the Single Farm Payment (SFP). Concerns were raised about possible future land use and production changes and their impact on rural communities. Here, such concerns are considered against the workings of the SFP in three EU Member States. Various quantitative studies that have determined the likely impact of the SFP within the EU and the study countries are reviewed. We present the results of a farm survey conducted in the study countries in which farmers’ responses to a decoupling scenario similar to the SFP were sought. We found that little short-term change was proposed in the three, rather different, study countries with only 30% of the farmers stating that they would alter their mix of farm activities. Furthermore, less than 30% of all respondents in each country would idle any land under decoupling. Of those who would adopt a new activity, the most popular choices were forestry, woodland and non-food crops.