What's in a Name? Reputation Building and Corporate Strategy.

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Academy of Management is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Academy of Management Journal.Firms compete for reputational status in institutional fields. Managers attempt to influence other stakeholders' assessments by signaling firms' salient advantages. Stakeholders gauge firms' relative merits by interpreting ambiguous informational signals from the firms, the media, and other monitors. The results of an empirical study of 292 large U.S. firms supported the general hypothesis that publics construct reputations on the basis of information about firms' relative structural positions within organizational fields, specifically using market and accounting signals indicating performance, institutional signals indicating conformity to social norms, and strategy signals indicating strategic postures. Understanding the informational medium from which publics construct reputations helps explain sources of mobility barriers within industries that originate in external perceptions.

Media Influence and Firms Behaviour: A Stakeholder Management Perspective

“…The perceived influence of the media is somewhat difficult to establish because of the specific features of this stakeholder: The media is pervasive and diffuse, and its influence is cumulative as well as all encompassing (Fombrun and Shanley, 1990). Although our research design controls for many firm-level and corporate-level variables, there are other contextual variables that could influence the prediction of actions.…”

How does corporate social responsibility impact banking efficiency: a case in China

“…Afterwards, the corporate reputation emerged as a popular point to support the positive link between CSR and CPF (Wu & Shen, 2013). Fombrun & Shanley (1990) asserted that higher contribution to CSR induces higher corporate reputation, which, in turn, can attract more customers, improve transactions, and increase loyalty. Furthermore, Bushman and WittenbergMoerman (2012) related high reputation to high profi tability.…”

Bank customers’ preferences and responses to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives in Ghana

“…Beyond the pressures that compel firms to engage in CSR, there is increasing evidence that links CSR to favourable stakeholder responses and firm performance indicators such as enhanced reputation, a motivated workforce, favourable consumer evaluations and increased purchases, the ability to attract potential employees and investors, and superior financial performance (Fombrun & Shanley 1990;Albinger & Freeman, 2000;Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001;Sen, Bhattacharya & Korschun, 2006;Brooks, 2010). Hence, beyond those factors that push firms into engaging in CSR (e.g.…”