No abstract

No abstract

The positive impact of sustainability on reputation has been assumed but not sufficiently examined. This study probes the veracity of these claims by applying legitimacy and signaling perspectives to examine whether sustainability performance and assurance contribute to corporate reputation. We find superior sustainability performance has a positive association with sustainability reputation. Companies with better performance are also more likely to obtain external assurance of their sustainability disclosure, but assurance does not directly affect reputation. Assurance appears to be a managerial tool associated with the congruence of internal processes rather than a differentiating signal to external stakeholders.

Manuscript Type: EmpiricalResearch Question/Issue: Companies operating in transition economies encounter a broad range of potential challenges. In the area of tax, firms make direct tax payments but may also encounter unofficial tax costs in the form of bribery or extortion. We focus on institutional determinants, including formal rules, informal rules, and enforcement, to examine conditions under which firms are more likely to encounter these transactions. We operationalize formal rules as rule-based trust and informal rules as dispositional trust.

No abstract