•The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between corporate social responsibility, employer brands and reputation.•Investing into CSR and employer branding leads to beneficial ...outcomes since the linkages are proven to be positive.•Organizations that put effort into CSR and brand activities are recognized for it and this effort in turn affects their reputation.•Respondents assign good reputations to organizations that are perceived as socially responsible and with a good employer brand.
Reputation management requires coordination between internal understanding and external expectations (Cornelissen, 2011). The focus of this study were external expectations of potential employees. The main goal of the study was to contribute to the understanding of corporate reputation and its connections with perceived corporate social responsibility and employer brands. All three concepts were investigated amongst 550 senior college business students. The units of analysis were top twenty national organizations, rated according to a syndicated study on employer attractiveness. The results show that students assign good reputation to those organizations that are perceived as socially responsible and with a good employer brand. Reputation, at least according to our results, seems to be the umbrella concept that encompasses both perceived corporate social responsibility and perceived employer brands. Organizations that develop different strategies, policies and practices with regards to socially responsible behavior and nurturing employer brands have higher levels of perceived reputation among students. Additionally, students' perceptions and position on the list of the most attractive employers is consistent.
This paper shows that corporate social responsibility (CSR) and firm value are positively related for firms with high customer awareness, as proxied by advertising expenditures. For firms with low ...customer awareness, the relation is either negative or insignificant. In addition, we find that the effect of awareness on the CSR-value relation is reversed for firms with a poor prior reputation as corporate citizens. This evidence is consistent with the view that CSR activities can add value to the firm but only under certain conditions.
This paper was accepted by Bruno Cassiman, business strategy.
Recent corporate reputation research focuses on customers as an important stakeholder group for whom firm reputation matters. The authors hypothesize that customer-based corporate reputation (CBR) ...may affect customer citizenship behaviors (CCB) and that both commitment and loyalty mediate the CBR–CCB relationship. The tests of the hypotheses use a sample of 583 service customers who evaluate the reputation of service firms. These results suggest that commitment and loyalty mediate the relationship between CBR and one type of CCB, that is, helping the company. The authors discuss the implications for marketing research and practice.
The current study aims to answer dual, related questions: Does corporate environmental policy affect corporate reputation, and does this link also influence risk‐adjusted profitability and company's ...risk? With a comprehensive framework involving analyses of each question, among a sample of firms traced by the Reputation Institute, this study reveals several notable results, after correcting for endogeneity biases. First, environmental engagement and green product innovation are both antecedents of corporate reputation. Second, corporate reputation has a positive impact on risk‐adjusted profitability and Z score indicator of financial distress risk. Thus, corporate environmental responsibility and green practices represent cospecialized assets that enhances an intangible asset, namely, corporate reputation. The latter influence constitutes a missing link between sustainable development and the firm's financial performance. Overall, environmental engagement and corporate reputation act as insurance‐like protections of firm competitiveness.
Reputation is critical for institutions wishing to attract and retain students in today's competitive higher education setting. Drawing on the resource based view and configuration theory, this ...research proposes that Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) need to understand not only the impact of independent resources but of resource configurations when seeking to achieve a strong, positive reputation. Utilizing fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), the paper provides insight into different configurations of resources that HEIs can utilize to build their reputation within their domestic and international student cohorts. Specifically, the results of a survey of current students at an Australian university distinguish nine diverse resource configurations leading to HEI reputation for domestic students. Reputation in the international cohort, on the other hand, is associated with six configurations, centered around learning support and campus life. Theoretical and managerial implications for HEIs are provided leading to directions for future research.
Reputation systems have been recognized as successful online review communities and word-of-mouth channels. Our study draws upon the elaboration likelihood model to analyze the extent that the ...characteristics of reviewers and their early reviews reduce or worsen the bias of subsequent online reviews. Investigating the sources of this bias and ways to mitigate it is of considerable importance given the previously established significant impact of online reviews on consumers' purchasing decisions and on businesses' profitability. Based on a panel data set of 744 individual consumers collected from Yelp, we used the Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation method to develop and empirically test a system of simultaneous models of consumer review behavior. Our results reveal that male reviewers or those who lack experience, geographic mobility, or social connectedness are more prone to being influenced by prior reviews. We also found that longer and more frequent reviews can reduce online reviews' biases. This paper is among the first to examine the moderating effects of reviewer and review characteristics on the relationship between prior reviews and subsequent reviews. Practically, this study offers businesses effective customer relationship management strategies to improve their reputations and expand their clientele.
Due to the increasingly competitive landscape in the international higher education marketplace, colleges and universities have much to gain from the benefits of successful branding. In the ...commercial realm, the knowledge base on branding topics is extensive; in the realm of non-profit higher education institutions, however, more research is needed. As higher education institutions strive to develop distinctive identities, deeper understanding about topics such as brand identity, meaning, image, and reputation will enable brand owners to communicate more effectively with stakeholders including faculty, students, alumni, employers, and others. The articles in this special section describe research using a variety of qualitative (e.g., case study, fuzzy set analysis, metaphor analysis) and quantitative methods (e.g., cross-sectional surveys with data subjected to regression or structural equation modeling) utilizing primary and secondary data Scholarly contributions include new frameworks and perspectives to strengthen brand architecture of higher education institutions in the international marketplace. Practitioner readers may gain new insights for effective brand building in their own higher education institution.
Corporate reputation has become one of the most important intangible assets for maintaining and enhancing firms’ competitiveness in the global marketplace. Researchers have shown considerable ...interest in measuring the corporate reputation construct, resulting in a lack of consensus on valid measurement approaches. Against this background, we discuss commonly used reputation measures from a conceptual as well as theoretical perspective, and empirically compare them in terms of convergent validity and criterion validity. By examining the measures’ psychometric properties, both theoretically and empirically, this study provides guidance for their reasonable application in business research and practice.
This study explores a new type of greenwashing behaviour, through the lenses of the “communicative constitution of organizations” (CCO), which challenges the dominant view in corporate social ...responsibility (CSR) studies. A theory-building case study was carried out by analysing the Volkswagen scandal. Both qualitative and quantitative data were obtained via a content analysis of both 2012–2014 CSR reports of the Volkswagen Group and a sample of 1151 U.S. newspaper headlines concerning Dieselgate, together with semi-structured interviews with former managers from Volkswagen. From a theoretical perspective, the study extends the greenwashing taxonomy by identifying a new type of irresponsible behaviour, namely “deceptive manipulation”. This reinforces the CCO perspective according to which sustainability communication acts as a constitutive force. In terms of managerial implications, the study suggests some approaches to prevent this specific type of greenwashing.
•A theory building approach to Dieselgate case is presented.•An extension of taxonomy of greenwashing is proposed.•This new type of greenwashing shows a performative character.•Theory of the communicative constitution of organizations is reinforced.
We study reputation incentives in the director labor market and find that directors with multiple directorships distribute their effort unequally based on the directorship's relative prestige. When ...directors experience an exogenous increase in a directorship's relative ranking, their board attendance rate increases and subsequent firm performance improves. Also, directors are less willing to relinquish their relatively more prestigious directorships, even when firm performance declines. Finally, forced Chief Executive Officer departure sensitivity to poor performance rises when a larger fraction of independent directors view the board as relatively more prestigious. We conclude that director reputation is a powerful incentive for independent directors.
