In search of the roots of corporate reputation management: Being a consistent corporate social performer

Corporate social performance (CSP) has received a particularly high share of attention as one of the main determinants of corporate reputation. However, few studies have tested the extent to which the relationship between CSP and corporate reputation may be affected by industry, country, or other context-related variables. Besides, some conceptual thinking suggests that the impact of CSP on corporate reputation may vary according to the level of consistency of a firm's behaviors. However, this view has not been empirically addressed. For this reason, the main objective of this study is to explore the impact of consistency in CSP management on corporate reputation. Specifically, we analyze both the effect of CSP internal consistency (or consistency between environmental and social performance) and CSP consistency over time on corporate reputation. The results based on data from an international sample of 133 companies for the period 2011 to 2016, support either CSP internal consistency or CSP consistency over time (positive increment of CSP over time) positively affecting corporate reputation. The results also confirm the moderation effect of CSP internal consistency on the relationship between CSP and corporate reputation. These results reveal that consistency in social responsibility management helps a firm to consolidate its corporate reputation.     

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.     

Employees: The key link to corporate reputation management

Employees and corporate reputation are unique resources that generate positive financial performance and ultimately create sustainable competitive advantage. Corporate reputation is vital to the organization, and employees are the key link to managing it. By recognizing the synergistic role that employees can play in the overall positioning of corporate reputation, management can obtain significant achievements in terms of satisfying corporate strategic objectives. Initiatives essential to gain employee commitment to corporate reputation enhancement are examined, along with the use of the balanced scorecard to integrate corporate reputation metrics into the incentive system.     

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.     

Effects of ethical sales behaviour,expertise, corporate reputation,and performance on relationship quality and loyalty

This analysis examines the influence of ethical sales behaviour, salesperson expertise, service performance, corporate reputation, and corporate performance on relationship quality and its consequences from multi-level perspectives in order to identify the nature of mix relationships at different levels. A survey with 505 qualified observations from financial institutions' customers in Taiwan was conducted. A structural equation modelling approach was used. Ethical sales behaviour, salesperson expertise, service performance, corporate reputation, and corporate performance, that is, the antecedents of relationship quality, have significant effects on relationship quality. Relationships exist between salespeople and customers, but customers also establish relationship with the retailers themselves. Satisfactory relationship quality has positive effects on commitment and loyalty. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

The impact of prior firm financial performance on subsequent corporate reputation

This study links corporate reputation, as measured byFortune magazine's Most Admired list, with firm financial performance. Seven measures of financial risk and return were collected for a sample of 149 firms from two time periods, 1981 and 1986. The mean score of four attributes from the 1993Fortune Most Admired list for the sample was then analyzed with the financial data through regression analysis. Two financial variables, Standard Deviation of the Market Return of the Firm and Return on Sales, explained between 0.12 and 0.14 of subsequent reputation. The implication for management is that they can affect a firm's subsequent reputation by lowering financial risk and controlling costs.Sue Annis Hammond is an Organizational Development Consultant based in Dallas, Texas. She has over ten years of internal consulting experience from her work at Meredith Corporation and Principal Financial Group. After taking time off from paid employment to complete a Masters of Organizational Development, she founded Kodiak Consulting, which specializes in the area of corporate culture change.John W. Slocum, Jr. holds the O. Paul Corley Chair in Management at the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University. He has received the Nicholas Salgo Distinguished Teaching and the Rotunda Outstanding Faculty Awards while on the faculty of SMU. He serves as a consultant to numerous organizations in the area of human resources management.     

Linking corporate logo,corporate image,and reputation: An examination of consumer perceptions in the financial setting

This study aims to fill a gap in marketing studies concerning the effect of a logo on consumer evaluations. The research addresses two questions: (1) what are the factors that influence the favorability of the corporate logo; and (2) what are the main influences of this favorability on corporate image and corporate reputation? The favorability of a corporate logo is reflected by the extent to which consumers positively regard that logo. The findings from the consumers' perspectives in the context of a financial setting, suggest that the main factors that bear influence on a favorable corporate logo (antecedents) are: corporate name, design, and typeface. The findings reveal the importance of the company's corporate logo in enhancing the corporate image, attitude toward advertisements, recognizability, familiarity, and corporate reputation. Key implications for managers and researchers are highlighted.     

Investigating the direct and indirect effects of corporate hypocrisy and perceived corporate reputation on consumers’ attitudes toward the company

Consumers are placing increasing importance on the social responsibility of firms when making purchase decisions. Nonetheless, corporate irresponsibility has become more prevalent in the corporate world. Through corporate social responsibility (CSR), companies can showcase their virtues and appear as good citizens while ignoring many internal standards. Hence, the primary purpose of this study was to explore the impact of corporate hypocrisy on CSR belief, corporate reputation, and consumers’ attitudes toward a company that may have a bad reputation. Second, we investigated the mediating effect of CSR belief and perceived corporate reputation on the relationships between corporate hypocrisy and consumers’ attitudes toward the company. We asked a sample of respondents in Australia (n =518) to respond to a real CSR campaign launched by a beer company. The results showed that CSR belief mediates the relationship between corporate hypocrisy and consumers’ attitudes toward the company. The results indicated a perception that companies may use CSR to try to shift the blame from producers to users. The results of this study provide guidelines for managers, social marketers, and public policy makers on how to create and evaluate companies’ CSR campaigns. The results of this study contribute to the debate on how consumers respond to various CSR campaigns as well as the intended or unintended consequences of CSR in directing consumers’ attention away from the negative impacts businesses have on society.     

Corporate Governance in Asia: A Survey

Corporate governance has received much attention in recent years, partly due to the Asian financial crisis. We review the literature on corporate governance issues in Asia to develop region‐specific and general lessons. Much attention has been given to poor corporate sector performance, but most studies do not suggest that Asian firms were badly run. The literature does confirm the limited protection of minority rights in Asia, allowing controlling shareholders to expropriate minority shareholders. Agency problems have been exacerbated by low corporate transparency, associated with rent‐seeking and relationship‐based transactions, extensive group structures and diversification, and risky financial structures. The controlling shareholder bears some of agency costs in the form of share price discounts and expenditures on monitoring, bonding and reputation building. The Asian financial crisis further showed that conventional and alternative corporate governance mechanisms can have limited effectiveness in systems with weak institutions and poor property rights. Overall, the understanding of the determinants of firm organizational structures, corporate governance practices and outcomes remains limited, however.     

Inside your social media ring: How to optimize online corporate reputation

Although it is well accepted that corporate communication has a direct impact on corporate reputation, little is known about the link between firms’ social media communication strategies and the formation of firms’ reputations in an online environment. This article contributes to this body of knowledge by studying the impact of social media communication strategies on firms’ reputations. The setting for our study is the hotel industry. The results offer insights regarding the challenges of developing online communication strategies that affect corporate reputation.     

How corporate reputation,quality, and value influence online loyalty

This study considers the role of corporate reputation and its relation to quality, perceived value, and loyalty in an online context. This milieu potentially challenges the relevance of the reported findings from the more traditional retail marketing situations. In this respect, a number of important questions are raised concerning how perceived value and quality impact on online loyalty and the effect corporate reputation has on this process. Research was conducted among customers of two diverse online vendors, one dealing in books and the other in shares. Findings from the two samples suggest that corporate reputation has a direct effect on online loyalty and provides an important mediating effect for perceived value and aspects of quality in terms of their impact on online loyalty.     

Social Responsibility and Performance: Does Strategic Orientation Matter for Small Businesses?

This paper examines whether strategic orientation toward corporate social responsibility (CSR) is instrumental in shaping small firms’ social responsibility practices leading to their enhanced financial performance and reputation. Data were collected from 182 small businesses operating in Malaysia based on random sampling technique and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling. Analysis of the findings confirm that small firms’ long‐term strategic approach toward CSR is critical in driving their responsible practices toward environment, customer, community, employees, and suppliers which in turn impact small firms’ financial performance and better reputation building. These findings suggest that customers' and employees’ interests are strategic imperatives that small firms should address in enhancing their financial performance and building better reputation in the community. These findings have important implications for small firms’ strategic policy posture which are highlighted in the paper. The paper also identifies the possible limits of the research and suggests avenues for future studies.     

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.     

The role of entrepreneurial capital in building service reputation

This paper uses theories of capital to discuss the impact of non-financial capital on small service firm reputation and performance. As the success of service firms is predicated on the ability to develop relationships and build reputation with key stakeholders, theories of capital provide a relevant conceptual framework for exploring the use of non-financial capital in building such relationships. Drawing on findings from a qualitative study, this paper discusses the economic, human, social, and symbolic capital of a matched-pairs sample of male and female entrepreneurs in the business services sector. The results highlight a relationship between symbolic capital and service reputation. Specifically, the interplay between economic, human, and social capital generates the symbolic capital relevant for service reputation and firm performance.     

Up the ante: Electronic word of mouth and its effects on firm reputation and performance

Prior management research on firm reputation has acknowledged the importance of word of mouth (WOM) in influencing key choices made by businesses, as well as by individuals. In recent developments, Internet-based WOM forums aggregate vast amounts of information relevant to firm strategy and operations. For example, online social media communities aggregate information generated by both the firm (i.e. firm-generated content FGC) and users (i.e. user-generated content UGC). We theorize that FGC and UGC generate reputation benefits for a company in the form of two intermediate information mechanisms: information diversity and valence. We first undertake a qualitative content analysis to investigate the extent to which FGC and UGC generate information diversity and valence. We then test the hypothesis that both information diversity and valence increase a firm's financial performance. Our findings show that electronic WOM as transmitted through social media communities enhances a firm's reputation and thereby its performance through both these effects (i.e. embedded information and valence). We thus fully delineate the determinants of ‘good reputation’ in these social environments. As part of our robustness checks, we also consider the impact of price and quality, the two specific FGC components, on firm performance. Our findings further confirm these relationships.     

Trust, reputation and corporate accountability to stakeholders

This paper explores the relationship between accountability, trust and corporate reputation building. Increasing numbers of corporations are mobilising themselves to put more and more information out into the public domain as a way of communicating with stakeholders. Corporate social accounting and stakeholder engagement is happening on an unprecedented scale. Rather than welcoming such initiatives, academics have been quick to pick faults with contemporary social auditing and reporting, claiming that in its current form it is not about demonstrating accountability at all, but rather about building corporate reputation. Academics argue that 'accountability should hurt', that if accountability is an enjoyable process, then the organisation isn't doing it right. For organisations that are currently engaging with stakeholders and ostensibly becoming more transparent about their corporate social performance, this kind of critique is likely to be bewildering. This paper argues that central to the notion of accountability and to contemporary social accounting practice is the concept of trust. Accountability is based upon a distrust of corporate management, whereas corporate reputation building is about strategically seeking to establish trust in stakeholder relationships in order to negate formal accountability requirements. Using a split trust continuum, the paper seeks to explain and synthesise what seem to be two very different paradigms of organisational transparency.     

An Exploratory Cross-Cultural Analysis of Marketing Ethics: The Case of Turkish,Thai, and American Businesspeople

Although a number of studies have shown that corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities often lead to greater organisational performance in western developed economies, researchers are yet to examine the strategic value of CSR in emerging economies. Using survey data from 280 firms operating in Dubai, this study examines the link between CSR activities and organisational performance. The results show that CSR has a positive relationship with all three measures of organisational performance: financial performance, employee commitment, and corporate reputation. These results reinforce the accumulating body of empirical support for the positive impact of CSR on performance and challenge the dominant assumption that, given the weak institutional framework in emerging economies, CSR activities drain resources and compromise firms’ competitiveness.     

Asset or constraint: Corporate reputation and MNCs’ involvement in the least developed countries

This study investigates the relationship between corporate reputation and a firm's involvement in the least developed countries (LDCs), where the most impoverished base of the pyramid markets are located. We draw upon extant literature in corporate reputation and international business to develop competing hypotheses regarding the foreign investment of the highly reputable firms in the LDCs. Corporate reputation can be a double-edged sword: while it can be a valuable asset to be leveraged in the LDCs, it demands monitoring and protection which might be challenged by a firm's LDC presence, thereby constraining the involvement in LDCs. Our results show that corporate reputation has a negative effect on a firm's foreign direct investment involvement in LDCs, supporting the view that reputation could constrain firm action in uncertain environments. We contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between reputation and international action than that of existing literature.     

Contextual influences on the corporate entrepreneurship-performance relationship: A longitudinal analysis

Over the past several years corporate entrepreneurship has been widely touted by executives and researchers alike as an effective means for revitalizing companies and improving their financial performance. For the most part, the call for greater entrepreneurial behavior on the part of established companies has been accepted on faith as an inherently desirable objective. The implicit logic behind the pervasive belief in the value of corporate entrepreneurship seems to be that risk taking, innovation, and aggressive competitive action—the key elements of entrepreneurial corporations—will help in identifying and pursuing lucrative product/market opportunities and in providing new bases for achieving superior competitive positions.But what do we really know about the financial consequences of corporate entrepreneurship? Most of the evidence that corporate entrepreneurship “pays off” is anecdotal in nature or based on cross-sectional studies that focus on the short-term implications of entrepreneurial behaviors. As such, in a definitive sense, we know very little about the financial consequences of corporate entrepreneurship.In an attempt to improve our understanding of this issue, this article describes a study of corporate entrepreneurship and its impact on company financial performance. Data were collected from three different samples over a seven-year period to assess the longitudinal impact of corporate entrepreneurship on firm performance. These samples consist of 24 medium-sized manufacturing firms representing 14 industry segments, 39 chemical companies, and 45 Fortune 500 industrial firms representing five industry segments. Data were gathered on each sample using both primary and secondary sources. Regression analysis was then used to analyze the data.The results suggest that corporate entrepreneurship has a positive impact on financial measures of company performance. This effect on performance, which tends to be modest over the first few years, increases over time, suggesting that corporate entrepreneurship may, indeed, be a generally effective means for improving long-term company financial performance. Moreover, the results indicate that corporate entrepreneurship is a particularly effective practice among companies operating in hostile environments (as opposed to benign environments).The study has three principal implications for practicing managers. First, the study documents the general financial viability of engaging in corporate entrepreneurship. This is not to suggest that corporate entrepreneurship is a panacea for improving financial performance. However, entrepreneurial behavior, when considered on the whole (i.e., across firms and industries), is associated with superior financial performance. Second, the study suggests a need to use a long-term time horizon in order to adequately judge the financial consequences of corporate entrepreneurship. The use of a shorter evaluation period may not allow sufficient time for entrepreneurial actions to have their full market and corresponding financial impact. Finally, the study identifies the context-specific character of effective entrepreneurial practice. Specifically, corporate entrepreneurship appears to be a particularly effective strategic practice among firms operating in hostile business settings.     

Signaling virtue: Does firm corporate social performance trajectory moderate the social performance–financial performance relationship?

Over the past 40 years, scholars have demonstrated the effects of corporate social performance (CSP) on corporate financial performance (CFP), finding mixed results on the main effect of CSP on CFP. This study moves beyond the search for a universal main effect of CSP on CFP to examine factors that drive some firms to experience greater returns from their CSP efforts. Building from the signaling and stakeholder theory definitions of reputation and the trajectory literature in psychology, this study examines the following question: what is the impact of a firm's CSP reputation on the relationship between CSP actions and CFP in the current period? Findings based on a sample of 351 US firms demonstrate that firms with either a history of growth in negative CSP, a propensity toward increasing negative CSP, or a more inconsistent history of positive or negative CSP, experience decreased returns from current period investments in CSP.