Employees' awareness of their impact on corporate reputation

Corporate reputation is critical for cultivating stakeholder relationships and, specifically, for regaining public trust. Corporate reputation results from the firm's interactions with stakeholders, emphasizing the important role employees play in reputation management. However, employees are not necessarily aware of, or prepared for, this extra-role assignment, indicating a gap in research and a managerial challenge. The purpose of the present article is to identify how employees' awareness of their impact on their employers' reputation is influenced by pride, job satisfaction, affective commitment, and perceived corporate reputation. An online survey of employees working for firms ranked in Fortune's America's Most Admired Companies Index provides empirical evidence. The findings underline the prominent effect pride in membership has regarding employees' awareness of their impact on corporate reputation. Study findings further deliver insights into opportunities and risks for managers who wish to use internal reputation building strategies to enhance corporate reputation.     

Modeling e-loyalty: a moderated-mediation model

ABSTRACT

This work proposes a research model that elaborates upon the development of e-loyalty based on the signaling theory and attachment theory. In the model, e-loyalty is indirectly related to both visual appeal and an e-tailer’s service reputation through the full mediation of trust and affection. At the same time, the relationships between trust and e-loyalty and between affection and e-loyalty are hypothetically moderated by an e-tailer’s service reputation. The proposed hypotheses of this research were empirically tested using data from working professionals in high-tech firms in terms of online retailing. This study surveyed the same research participants at two different time points, one month apart, to verify the theoretical inferences. The empirical findings herein complement the previous literature by presenting how visual appeal and an e-tailer’s service reputation simultaneously influence e-loyalty through various mediating and moderating mechanisms.     

审计师个人视角下客户影响力与审计质量的关系研究

利用中国A股上市公司2012～2015年的数据,采用面板数据模型与文本挖掘方法检验了审计师层面的客户费用影响力、规模影响力、舆论影响力与审计质量的关系.研究发现: 客户的费用影响力、舆论影响力与审计质量显著正相关,在控制了事务所层面的客户影响力与内生性问题后该结果依然稳健.进一步研究显示,审计师部分个人特征、客户所处的法律环境、舆论环境等因素会对主要结果起到一定的调节作用.研究结果为客户影响力与审计质量的关系提供了进一步的理论解释和全新的经验证据,其重要启示是: 在我国的审计市场中,客户影响力并未迫使审计师在审计质量上做出让步,为避免审计失败可能造成的声誉损害、经济损失和诉讼风险,审计师有动机为影响力高的客户提供高质量的审计服务.     

Analyzing the relationship between CSR and reputation in the banking sector

Theoretical studies form the core of the literature on the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and bank reputation, with few empirical applications discussing the validity of these theoretical proposals. Additionally, the evidence for the links between CSR aspects and bank reputation is inconclusive. This study aims to shed light on the impact of CSR on bank reputation. First, a systematic review of the literature on the empirical studies that relates CSR to bank reputation is performed. These studies indicate significant discrepancies in the measurement of CSR and its links with bank reputation. Second, an empirical study is presented in order to test the impact that CSR (employer branding, integrity and social action) has on the reputation of leading banks in the United Kingdom and Spain. The results obtained call into question the ability of CSR to improve a banking reputation in an unstable financial system.     

中国服务业技术效率的系统性分析

本文利用随机前沿分析法研究后发现,从行业层面看,管制松的行业技术效率比管制紧、进入壁垒高的服务行业高,技术效率由东部向中西部呈递减,各地区存在行业分布的结构性差异;2004-2009年的服务业技术效率先小幅上升后下降,而且有些行业具有抗外界经济波动冲击的特性。从上市公司层面看,进入壁垒越高,行业技术效率越高,民营企业技术效率低于国有或集体所有制企业。通过对比发现,这很有可能是管制引起的,高进入壁垒给在位垄断企业带来了好处,但导致了行业内部的发展不平衡。     

声誉激励还是经济激励——独立董事"跳槽"的实证研究

This paper analyzes the real motivations behind independent directors’ (IDs) job-hopping behavior based on 75 cases from 2001 to 2005. Relevant extant literature is reviewed and an analytical framework based on reputation incentive mechanism (such as company reputation, a company’s position in the hierarchy of Chinese firms’ administrative reporting relationships, and job risks) and economic incentive mechanism (including IDs’ remunerations and HR costs) have been put forward. Results show that reputation-related factors, such as a listed company’s reputation and job risks, are the main influencing factors of IDs’ job-hopping behavior. This finding indicates that sole emphasis on IDs’ remunerations may not able to motivate IDs effectively and the reputation mechanism is more effective in motivating IDs. Contributions of this paper include enrichment of the extant literature on corporate governance from a brand-new perspective and provision of empirical evidence for further improvement in the incentive mechanisms for IDs. Translated and revised from Zhongguo Kuaiji Pinglun 中国会计评论 (China Accounting Review), 2008, 6(2): 177–192     

The Effects of Globalisation on the US Labour Mark'et: Service Sectors Considered

How has globalisation affected employment and wages in the United States? Existing studies largely ignore the intersector labour movement between the manufacturing and service sectors by focusing only on the intrasector movement within the manufacturing sector. However, by decomposing the aggregate labour demand in the United States, we find that the intersector movement is more substantial than intrasector movement. Motivated by the decomposition results, this study presents a three‐sector model that includes a manufacturing sector and two service sectors at varying skill intensities. The model shows that offshoring might translate into smaller‐than‐expected wage changes because of the intersector labour movement. In line with the theoretical predictions, two notable empirical results are presented. First, an occupation's exposure to offshoring has non‐significant, albeit negative, effects on wages. Second, the more an occupation is exposed to offshoring, the lower its employment in the manufacturing sector as a share of its total employment. Furthermore, these effects are larger for more routine occupations or those requiring less education.     

To Be or Not to Be [Locked in]: An Investigation of Buyers' Commitments of Dedicated Investments to Support New Transactions

ABSTRACT

This study draws on two prominent theoretical frameworks, transaction cost analysis and social exchange, which serve as the basis for much of the empirical literature in relationship marketing to investigate the investment behavior of industrial buyers. Specifically, we examine the manner by which situational and contextual factors identified from those frameworks influence buyers' commitment of dedicated investments to support new transactions within ongoing exchange relationships. Our empirical results show that buyer dedicated investments are positively influenced by the extent of supplier dedicated investments, thus supporting the safeguarding rationale posed by transaction cost theory and the reciprocal nature of commitments derived from social exchange theory. Such investments are also positively influenced by the extent of past adaptations made within the pre-existing relationship, consistent with the generalized hostage explanation from the transaction cost literature and theories of the incremental development of relationships. These investments are also positively influenced by the size of the procurement but negatively influenced when a multisourcing purchasing strategy is being pursued, which are consistent with means to manage dependency. It was also found that buyer investments are not uniformly influenced by perceived environmental uncertainty related to supply and market sectors and technological conditions, suggesting that buyers respond to the risks associated with each of these environmental sectors in a distinctive manner.     

A pragmatic service typology: capturing the distinctive dynamics of services in time and space

Many service classifications have provided helpful yet partial perspectives on the heterogeneity of services. This paper reconciles and integrates different earlier classifications into a new holistic typology of the service economy which is based on detailed statistical service sectors. Moreover, the paper assesses the empirical value of this taxonomy to capture the diversity of services development in time and space. A regional analysis of employment data in Germany provides evidence that knowledge intensive as well as business services follow very different sectoral and spatial dynamics than operational and consumer services. This typology yields differential insights in longitudinal and comparative regional analysis of the service economy.     

国内旅行社连锁经营战略模式研究

通过对国内大型旅行社连锁经营模式为主要研究视角,以应用研究为写作指导思想．通过实地调研、文献收集和比较分析等方法的综合运用,对国内几家大型旅行社的连锁经营模式进行实证研究,发现连锁经营作为旅行社的新兴商业模式和营销体系对于改善旅行社企业的管理水平,整顿旅行社市场“小、散、弱、差”的现状,提升大型旅行社的市场调控力及国际竞争力,挽救旅行社日益缺失的市场信誉,进而加速实现合理的行业分工体系具有很强的现实意义     

A Dynamic Analysis of Exchange Rate Exposure: The impact of China's Renminbi

This study examines the impacts of unexpected exchange rate movements of Chinese renminbi (CNY/USD) on stock returns of Standard & Poor's 500 corporations. To gain better insight into the long‐standing exposure puzzle concerning the divergence between theoretical and empirical investigation and the critical issue regarding the determinants of exposure, the time variation and asymmetry property associated with foreign exchange exposure are further taking into account. We also broaden the scope of analysis to investigate unexpected risk exposure at 10 economic sectors in compliance with Global Industry Classification Standard. Unlike those from the static analysis or dynamic ones with the ordinary least squares model, the empirical findings provide additional concrete evidence that unexpected exchange rate exposure varies substantially across time and market circumstances when using the quantile regression with a rolling method. Furthermore, our dynamic analysis not only supports the existence of industrial effects across different economic sectors, but also provides strong evidence that financial factors, such as size, debt ratio and book to market ratio, have a significant impact on exposure.     

Service Firms Heterogeneity,International Collaborations and Export Participation

The paper investigates the relationship between service firms’ international collaboration strategies and export decision. It proposes an extension of the recent class of models of firm heterogeneity, intermediation and international trade according to which service firms can engage in a collaboration agreement with a foreign partner in order to favour their market access and distribution activities overseas. The paper analyses the empirical relevance of this model by means of a new survey dataset providing information on the internationalization activities of 814 Norwegian firms in the service sectors for the period 2004–2006. The econometric results point out that international collaboration, both on existing and on innovative services, is indeed an important factor to foster service firms’ decision to enter the export market.     

Marketing's reputation and influence in the firm

This study examines whether or not marketing's influence in the firm is fundamentally a reputation issue. Based on a sample of 122 senior executives of Australian firms operating in a wide range of manufacturing industries, empirical findings show that the marketing function's reputation in a firm is an important antecedent of marketing's influence in a firm. Results also show that the reputation-influence link is contingent on a firm's particular strategic stance (cost-leadership strategy and differentiation strategy). Results further show that marketing's reputation was good and marketing's influence was strong in the Australian firms surveyed. Directions for future research are discussed.     

Stakeholder-Defined Corporate Responsibility for a Pre-Credit-Crunch Financial Service Company: Lessons for How Good Reputations are Won and Lost

This paper presents a study that identifies a stakeholder-defined concept of Corporate Responsibility (CR) in the context of a UK financial service organisation in the immediate pre-credit crunch era. From qualitative analysis of interviews and focus groups with employees and customers, we identify, in a wide-ranging stakeholder-defined concept of CR, six themes that together imply two necessary conditions for a firm to be regarded as responsible—both corporate actions and character must be consonant with CR. This provides both empirical support for a notable, recent theoretical contribution by Godfrey (in Acad Manag Rev 30:777–798, 2005) and novel lessons for reputation management practice.     

中国生产者服务业的增长、结构变化及其影响——基于投入-产出法的分析

本文采用投入-产出方法,在生产者服务的本来意义上,而不是从具体的带有生产者服务特性的服务部门出发,对中国生产者服务业的增长、结构变化及其影响进行经验研究,由此得出一些基本结论:1981年以来,中国生产者服务业在国民经济中的地位逐步上升,服务业的生产者服务功能逐渐显现,但与英、美等国相比,中国生产者服务占国民总产出比重偏低;中国服务业及其有关分部门与国民经济其他产业或部门的前后向联系效应相对较弱,说明中国服务业的增长不仅不能对国民经济产生应有的带动作用,而且其本身受其他部门的需求拉动作用也不大.     

Technology transfers and optimal entry strategies for the multinational firm

This paper analyses the choice of full versus shared ownership of the production affiliate made by Italian multinationals in Asia, based on an entirely new firm-level dataset, constructed by the author. The decision to internalise production, rather than relying on a local partner, is driven by the threat of Dissipation of Intangible Assets, both at a theoretical and an empirical level. In particular, we show that full ownership is more likely to emerge in Asia for Italian firms endowed with better technology and human capital, or belonging to high tech sectors.     

Be bad but (still) look good: Can controversial industries enhance corporate reputation through CSR initiatives?

Even though the link between perceived corporate social responsibility fit (PCSR‐fit) and corporate reputation has received much attention from scholars, this tradition has ignored that the underpinnings of this association vary depending on the particular characteristics of each industry under study. To delve into this matter, we investigate in the increasingly relevant context of controversial industries (CIs) how PCSR‐fit could enhance corporate reputation and which are the mediating mechanisms of this association. Our academic contribution is twofold. First, we find that controversial sectors indeed can increase corporate reputation through CSR activities. However, we find that to achieve this goal, the nature of PCSR‐fit should be different than what extant literature indicates, because companies in these settings should directly focus on avoiding or reducing their inherent controversial harm or impact. Second, we evidence that “CSR initiatives' legitimacy” and “situational skepticism” mediate the PCSR‐fit and corporate reputation relationship in CIs. Therefore, we further unravel the underpinnings of this association to advance what we know on the matter and aid practitioners in this particular context.     

I Love That Company: Look How Ethical,Prominent, and Efficacious It Is—A Triadic Organizational Reputation (TOR) Scale

Within the corporate social responsibility (CSR) research field, the construct of organizational reputation has been extensively scrutinized as a crucial mediator between the firm CSR engagement and valuable organizational outcomes. Yet, the existing literature on organizational reputation suffers from substantive divergence between the studies in terms of defining the construct’s domain, dimensional structure, and the methodological operationalization. The current study aims to refine the organizational reputation construct by reconciling varying theoretical perspectives within the construct’s definitional landscape, suggesting a holistic but parsimonious triadic view on the organizational reputation construct for customer stakeholders. Based on commonly used extant organizational reputation measures, we theoretically and empirically develop the customer-based triadic organizational reputation (TOR) scale and position it as a superordinate multidimensional construct (generalized favorability) influencing three distinct first-order dimensions: product and service efficacy, societal ethicality, and market prominence. Results show that the proposed triadic conceptualization of organizational reputation is theoretically defensible, and the resulting scale is cross-culturally generalizable and performs well compared with existing, longer measures of organizational reputation. Together, the organizational reputation model developed here suggests that, for cognitive economy and functional efficiency, customers will access a second-order reflective model of organizational reputation as the default implicit attitude (reputation as assessment), which in turn will activate reflections of the implicit attitude in the form of first-order dimensions (reputation as asset).     

Factors Influencing Successful Brand Extensions

Organisations frequently follow brand extension strategies. This paper investigates the impact of category similarity, brand reputation, perceived risk and consumer innovativeness on the success of brand extensions in FMCG, durable goods and services sectors. A set of hypotheses were developed and tested in a study amongst 701 consumers. The findings show that extensions into categories more similar to the original brand tend to be more readily accepted. Likewise, the reputation of the original brand is an important factor influencing the success of the extension. These findings are consistent across FMCG, durable goods and services brands. However, perceived risk about the extension category was only found to enhance acceptability of extensions for durable goods and services brands. Innovative consumers are more positively disposed towards service brand extensions than FMCG and durable goods brand extensions.     

中档女性服装顾客感知价值实证分析

本文结合中档女装行业的特点,对影响顾客感知价值的因素进行实证研究,通过因子分析,得出中档女装顾客感知价值要素中影响顾客感知价值的主要因子分别是服务、价格、归属、产品内在属性、广告、品牌口碑和产品外在属性因子。