Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities substantially impact a company’s reputation. As companies increasingly embrace social media to communicate CSR activities, they face the challenge of selecting the appropriate message source. In this context, this paper examines the role of message source in the relationship between CSR communication and corporate reputation.

Corporate reputation – the central antecedent of trust – bears the potential to create sustainable competitive advantage. However, far too many examples of companies’ socially irresponsible behavior over the past years led to a severe crisis of confidence. Disgraced companies suffer from the adverse effects of their misbehaviors at all levels. As a consequence, one of the top priorities for both practitioners and business scholars is the identification of opportunities to (re)build corporate reputation. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), a key driver of reputation perceptions, is a very promising one. However, as CSR is a multidimensional construct that comprises a wide range of activities, the selection of the “right” ones deems a major challenge. Based on a literature review, we advocate that news media data should be utilized to analyze which CSR dimensions are particularly likely to affect reputation perceptions. As journalists rely on companies’ press releases as a starting point for their business articles, companies need to carefully evaluate which CSR dimensions they emphasize in their communication strategy. Based on superior measures of reputation and CSR, this study utilizes reputation and news media coverage data on companies listed in the German DAX30 between 2005 and 2011. The panel data regression encompasses the multidimensional concept of CSR, presenting a six-dimensional CSR construct including environment, employee relations, community, product issues, corporate culture and corporate governance. Relevant moderating variables, namely firm and stakeholder characteristics, are investigated. In this context, the results show that the relevance of each of those six distinct dimensions differs for the formation of reputation judgements and varies across investigated stakeholder and company types: across all model specifications, negative media coverage addressing employee relations and community affects reputation perceptions. The general public primarily perceives negative news coverage as relevant for their reputation judgements. Opinion leaders seem to be less dependent on the media to learn about CSR dimensions, as only four out of twelve independent variables exert a significant impact on their reputation judgments. News coverage about product issues only constitutes a key role in the formation of reputation judgements of firms that are predominantly known from direct experiences. A particularly large amount of variation can be explained for reputation ratings of these companies as well as for reputation perceptions of opinion leaders.

Introduction The attributes of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) have a significant influence on the actions of the organization and, ultimately, firm performance (Chatterjee & Hambrick, 2007; Kashmiri, Nicol, & Arora, 2017). Recently, there has been growing interest in one particular CEO attribute, i.e., narcissism and how this individual characteristic affects actions taken by the firm and the outcomes achieved. Narcissistic CEOs have been described as “having an inflated self-concept that is enacted through a desire for recognition and a high degree of self-reference when interacting with others (Resick, Whitman, Weingarden, & Hiller, 2009: pg. 1367).” Prior research has found that CEOs with a more narcissistic personality make riskier decisions by changing the company’s strategy more often (Chatterjee & Hambrick, 2007), making acquisitions more frequently and of larger targets (Chatterjee & Hambrick, 2007), adopting discontinuous technologies (Gerstner, König, Enders, & Hambrick, 2013), and expanding international business activities (Oesterle, Elosge, & Elosge, 2016). The results of previous studies show that by pursuing decisions with greater risk and involving the firm in wide-ranging efforts, the actions of narcissistic CEOs lead to fluctuating firm performance (Chatterjee & Hambrick, 2007) and diminishes the positive effect of various firm activities. While these prior studies have provided valuable insight, the strong emphasis on the organizational actions taken as a consequence of the narcissistic CEO has not added to our understanding of the relationship between CEOs who seek personal affirmation, admiration, and attention and important intervening variables for firm performance such as corporate brand reputation. Corporate brand reputation signals the status of an organization and influences the actions of capital markets, investors, consumers, and applicants in the job market (Fombrun & Shanley, 1990). Managers actively work to construct favourable corporate brand reputations through the actions the firm takes and the information selectively released to the media and public. Yet, the literature suggests that narcissistic CEOs spend time focusing on how to enhance their own image rather than on achieving organizational goals (Resick et al., 2009). In this regard, the attention-seeking CEO likely becomes a focal point for the corporate brand. However, no research to date has examined the relationship between the narcissistic CEO’s personality and the effects of corporate brand reputation. This study fills the gap in the literature by investigating how CEO narcissism influences the effectiveness of corporate brand reputation on firm performance. Theoretical development The literature on corporate brands noted that corporate brand reputation is a critical intangible asset that affects firm performance (Roberts & Dowling, 2002). Stakeholders use corporate brand reputation as a means to compare and contrast competitors Researchers have noted various advantages for highly reputable firms: customers are willing to pay more for offerings (Roberts & Dowling, 2002) and accept new product innovations (Dowling, 2002); managers accept lower remuneration (Tavassoli, Sorescu, & Chandy, 2014) and receive higher payoff for investments (Benjamin & Podolny, 1999). These types of advantages allow for greater performance. Thus, consistent with prior literature, we argue the following: Hypothesis 1: Corporate brand reputation has a positive effect on future firm performance. Research has shown that CEO narcissism diminishes the effect of the firm’s positive actions. Petrenko, Aime, Ridge, and Hill (2016) argue that narcissistic CEOs pursue Corporate Social Responsibility efforts (CSR) as a means to enhance their own image. Yet, the authors found that the narcissistic CEOs actually reduce the positive affect of CSR initiatives. Likewise, Engelen, Neumann, and Schmidt (2016) examined the effect CEO narcissism had on the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and performance finding that CEO narcissism lessens the positive effect of entrepreneurial orientation. These results are due to the narcissistic CEOs perpetual need for attention and self-affirmation which leads to unconcentrated work initiatives and a lack of attention to the needs of employees. When subordinates’ needs are ignored they develop a sense of powerlessness, incompetence and a lack of desire to present their own ideas. This environment diminishes entrepreneurial engagement (Engelen et al., 2016; Wales, Patel, & Lumpkin, 2013). In line with this view, we believe the attention-seeking narcissistic CEO competes with the development of the corporate brand and will dampen the positive effect of highly reputable brands on firm performance. Thus, we argue the following: Hypothesis 2: CEO narcissism diminishes the positive effect of corporate brand reputation on firm performance. Method We compiled a unique unbalanced panel composed of data from COMPUSTAT, ExecuComp, and Fortune Most Admired Companies listing. Our sample includes 993 firm-year observations consists of 237 CEOs from 144 U.S companies on eight-year period, 2009-2016. Data on CEOs were collected from the ExecuComp databases. Financial performance data were from COMPUSTAT. Firm reputation was obtained from firm’s published score in the Fortune “Most Admired Companies” survey in a given year. The fortune rating is obtained through surveys from executives and directors, and has been widely used in previous research (Love, Lim, & Bednar 2017). Our independent and control variables are measured in the year prior to the one in which the survey ratings are published. CEO narcissism is invariant meaning narcissism is a relatively stable disposition similar to Chatterjee and Hambrick’s (2011) and obtained by averaging data from the second and third years of each CEO’s tenure (t + 1 and t + 2). First year of the CEO’s tenure was not considered because of frequently mentioned anomalies reported at first year. CEO narcissism was measured with the same way as Chatterjee and Hambrick’s (2011). Thus, it combines indicators for (1) the prominence of the CEO’s photograph in the company’s annual report; (2) the CEO’s prominence in the company’s press releases; (3) the CEO’s use of first-person singular pronouns in interviews; (4) the CEO’s cash relative pay where cash compensation divided by that of the second-highest paid executive in the firm; and (5) the CEO’s non-cash relative pay where non-cash compensation divided by that of the second-highest-paid executive in the firm. Dependent variables were measures annually and consider available data after the second-year tenure of CEO (n > 2), yielding a 380 firm-years, 61 CEOs for testing our hypothesis. Firm performance was measured with Tobin’s Q (TQ), calculated by dividing the firm’s market value by firm’s asset replacement costs. We have the CEO, the firm, and the industry level control variables. CEO level control variables are CEO age, CEO tenure, CEO gender, CEO stock ownership as the percentage of company stock owned by the CEO, whether the CEO was also board chairman (duality). Firm-level control variables are firm’s the prior year performance, firm size (natural logarithm of revenues t+n–1), firm age, for each dependent variable, to consider strategy or performance tendencies, we included performance value for the firm in the year prior to the start of the CEO’s tenure (t – 1). Industry control variables are dummies for the industry sector (manufacturing, regulated and services industries), the industry average (for all firms in the sample, always excluding the focal firm) in each year (t + n), for each dependent variable to be able to control for industry tendencies. To control for endogeneity i.e. narcissistic CEOs are drawn to certain situations and/or that some conditions, we followed exactly the same procedure of Chatterjee and Hambrick’s (2011). Thus, we regressed CEO narcissism on firm revenues, age, ROA, and calendar year for the year prior to the CEO’s start, ROA change between first and second years of CEO tenure, measures in t+1, namely power (CEO/chair duality and CEO ownership), CEO age, industry dummies. Using the regression coefficients of the significant variables, we calculated each CEO’s predicted narcissism score and included that value as an endogeneity control in our analyses. We used generalized estimating equations (GEE) (Liang & Zeger, 1986), which derive maximum likelihood estimates and accommodate non-independent observations. Due to multiple observations for almost all firms, there is non-independency in our model. We specified a Gaussian (normal) distribution with an identity link function. The covariance structure of the repeated measurement was autoregressive of order one (AR(1)). We used robust variance estimators in our estimations. We used the xtgee routine in Stata 14.2. Results and conclusions The results provide considerable support for hypotheses 1 and 2. Hypothesis 1 predicted that corporate reputation has a positive effect on firm performance (b = .02, p < .01). CEO narcissism is a moderating effect between corporate brand reputation and firm performance. Specifically, CEO narcissism diminishes the positive effect of corporate reputation on firm performance (b = -.04, p < .05). Besides, CEO narcissism have a negative main effect on firm performance (b = -.14, p < .05). Corporate reputation is an intangible asset for firms and positively associated with firm performance according to our results. Little is known so far about the CEO and corporate brand relationship and the role of CEO brands in creating value for the company (Bendisch, Larsen, & Trueman, 2013). We investigated how CEO narcissism influence the relationship between firm’s reputations and firm performance which have not been investigated so far. Since CEOs are the face of the company and it contributes to corporate brand value, narcissistic CEOs might diminish the effect of corporate brand reputation on firm performance with their actions and messages. We find support for our ideas. As a future research, we suggest investigating this issue for different industry sectors and different firm performance measures. Besides, the process of what type of actions of CEOs might diminish brand value should be investigated further. When narcissistic CEOs reduce corporate brand reputation, another potential topic worth to investigate further.

Given the strategic importance of firm reputation due to its potential for value creation, extant reputation research focuses on favorable customer outcomes. Building on an established conceptualization of customer-based corporate reputation, this study proposes and tests a model that relates the reputation of fashion retailers to customer-perceived risk and two relational outcomes—trust and commitment. Using a sample of more than 300 German fashion shoppers, the study finds support for the hypothesized linkages. Furthermore, not all linkages are equally strong between women and men. Implications for marketing theory and practice conclude.

This research was conducted in order to examine the influence of corporate reputation in terms of as an employer towards both brand reputation and customer purchase decisions represented by brand perception, purchase frequency and category of items purchased. In this study, customers’ perception of the brand was also explored to identify the core blocks that form customers’ perception of the brand. The results indicate that corporate reputation did not have a strong influence on brand reputation, as customers viewed them as separate entities. Customers tended to form their brand perception based on the product features as opposed to the corporate reputation. In terms of purchase decision, the results showed that they were made and driven based on the customers’ brand perception with category of items purchased reflecting aspects of the brand perception. The study demonstrates that customers’ awareness of the corporate reputation does not affect purchase behavior, while brand perception is hardly impacted by the awareness of corporate reputation based on a survey focusing on a renowned domestic fashion-clothing retailer conducted among Japanese shoppers. Reputation is formed from a synthesis of the perception, opinions and attitudes of an organization’s stakeholders including employees, customers and community (Post and Griffin, 1997). It basically is a perceptual representation of a company’s past actions and future prospects that describe the firm’s appeal to all of its key constituents (Fombrun, 1966). Corporate reputations and brands are important assets in enabling organizations to exploit opportunities and mitigate threats (Argenti and Druckenmiller, 2004). A favourable reputation correlates with superior overall returns (Robert and Dowling, 1997; Vergin and Qoronfleh, 1998) as it encourages investments from shareholders, attracts good staff and retains customers (Markham, 1972). While corporate reputation is a stakeholder’s perception and evaluation of the organization over an extended period of time, corporate brands involve the organization’s efforts and initiatives in the form of corporate expression. Literature states that corporate brand comprises of two aspects: first corporate expression, which covers all mechanisms employed by the organization to express its identity and second, stakeholder images that are formed from interaction and experience with the brand (Abratt and Kleyn, 2011). Consumers judge brands based on trust that is developed from the way consumers view brand reputation, brand competence and brand constituent (Lau and Lee, 1999). The intricate relationship between reputation and brands leads to the heart of the study whether both are positively correlated, where the more positive the reputation, the stronger the brand is. In the fashion industry, labels play an important role hence among other aspects this study covers an interesting point where it looks at a fashion brand that has a fairly bad reputation and examines the extent of which the reputation is able to influence the brand perception as well as the customers’ purchase decisions.

Attitude and ability of frontline employees in customer interaction influence company reputation. Since respective theory is scarce, this paper – based on a qualitative interview study – presents an examination of the status quo of the topic in luxury watch retail. Theories of service quality, identity and impression management are briefly addressed.

Consumers are increasingly willing to consider ethical aspects in their buying decisions, while organizations strategically respond to consumer needs in this respect by focusing on their ethical reputation in their branding strategies (Singh et al., 2012). Moreover, brands are increasingly switching to natural ingredients in their products or adding an organic option to their current product line (Johri & Sahasakmontri, 1998; Prothero & McDonagh, 1992; Todd, 2004). Although the majority of the growth of green and ethical products is found within the organic food (Organic Monitor, 2011; Willer & Kilcher, 2010) and fair trade products (FLO, 2011) categories, there also seems to be constant growth in the demand for organic personal care products (PCPs) (Smitson, 2006). In contrast, scientific research on organic Personal Care Products (PCPs) seems to be scarce (Kim & Chung, 2011). The current study investigates the effect of brand associations on consumer perceptions considering organic PCPs. More specifically, we focus on the role of corporate ability (CA) versus corporate social responsibility (CSR) associations in brand equity (Yoo et al., 2000) and brand trust (Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2001) perceptions. To test the effects of CA and CSR associations on consumer brand equity and trust, we first conducted a pretest, in which we included brands with the highest market share in the Dutch PCP market (Nielsen Market Analytics, April 2013). Based on the results of the pretest the following brands were selected for the main study: L’Oréal, Rituals and Palmolive. For the main experiment respondents were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions in a between-subjects design: L’Oréal (N=42), Palmolive (N=42) and Rituals (N=37). Based on the results of the experiment we can draw the following conclusions. Brands may be associated with both CA and CSR characteristics. Even though possible benefits induced by introducing an organic PCP are higher for brands that are currently associated with CSR, other brands may benefit still from introducing an organic PCP, as the effects of CSR associations and an organic product launch merely seem to be complementary. When a brand considers the introduction of a green variant of its current PCP line, the brand does not seem to need a specific “green” reputation or image. More important, the producing company behind the brand should communicate its innovative characteristics as a market leader as well as a sense of responsibility toward the environment and society. Combining CA with CSR characteristics seems to be the most profitable strategy for attracting more consumers than one’s competitors. Although one should constantly aim to remain competitive in the market, the overall effects of sustainable initiatives will be much lower for brands with a weaker reputation in general than for brands that already induce multiple positive associations. In sum, an organization that decides to introduce a new organic product should be aware of the strong positive associations of their current brands on a variety of product characteristics. In the end, investing in improving multiple positive associations instead of focusing on either CSR or CA will be the most profitable strategy.

In recent years, the exploration of the quantifiable effects of market-based intangible assets on firm performance has become increasingly important in marketing and management literature. Corporate reputation, considered as a one of the key marketing metrics for maintaining and enhancing companies’ competitiveness in the globalized economy, plays an essential part in this context. Numerous studies show the impact of reputation on measures of financial performance, justifying companies’ endeavors to install and dedicate effort towards systematic reputation management and tracking. A possible consequence of a good reputation that has so far been neglected in academic research is a decrease in a company’s cost of equity capital, a measure that constitutes an important basis for the decision to invest in future projects, thus playing a vital part in the creation and preservation of strategic competitive advantages. A firm’s cost of equity is defined as the required rate of return, given the market’s perception of the firm’s riskiness. It is based on investors’ expectations about future returns and estimated by means of residual income models with varying assumptions and restrictions (in this study: Claus and Thomas 200, Gebhardt et al. 2001, Ohlson and Juettner-Nauroth 2005, and Easton 2004), equating the current stock price to future cash flows that are discounted with the firm’s implied cost of equity. To account for industry-specific idiosyncrasies, each firm’s cost of equity is adjusted by the monthly industry median. Corporate reputation is defined as an attitudinal mindset towards a company. Following the model of Schwaiger (2004), it is conceptualized as a two-dimensional construct comprising a cognitive (competence) and an affective (likeability) component; reputation is the linear combination of these two dimensions. Corporate reputation data was collected in 13 semi-annual waves from large-scale samples representing the general public in Germany. By applying panel data analysis on a set of the 30 largest publicly listed German companies during a seven-year time-span (2005-2011) and controlling for commonly known factors, I show that corporate reputation significantly reduces a firm’s cost of equity. This relationship holds when reputation is corrected for prior financial performance and industry affiliation. My results should help managers to further strengthen their argument that reputation management is value-relevant. This study should be seen as a starting point for further research to gain a deeper understanding of the reputation-cost of capital-interface.

Purpose: Most of all studies regarding corporate social responsibility have been dealing with its direct performance. Many previous studies provided the evidence that corporate social responsibility activities directly affect firms‘ competitiveness or corporate reputation. However, there are no studies regarding the role of social capital between corporate social responsibility and firms‘ competitiveness. The present study aims to examine a mediating role of social capital between corporate social responsibility and corporate reputation. Research design, data and methodology: The structural equation model integrating corporate social responsibility, social capital, and corporate reputation was proposed with three hypotheses. Questionnaire including 15 question items for three concepts was designed. Data for testing hypotheses were collected from students and staff who had experienced the social responsibility activities of Korea Hydro & Nuclear Co. Ltd. SPSS and SmartPLS were used to analyze data. Results: All three hypotheses were supported at the significance level of 0.01. Corporate social responsibility have a significant influence on social capital as well as corporate reputation. Social capital plays a mediating role in the relationship between corporate social responsibility and corporate reputation. Conclusions: The present paper identified a missing link between corporate social responsibility and corporate reputation by validating an indirect effect of corporate social responsibility on corporate reputation through social capital. The present study contributes to finding the indirect link between corporate social responsibility and corporate reputation. Implications for academics and practitioners. The research model can be extended to analyze the relationship between corporate social responsibility and its performance. The present study sheds light on identification of a new role of social capital. Managers of firms have the opportunity to recognize the fact that investment recovery of corporate social responsibility results from social capital and corporate reputation in long-term rather than short-term. The results of this study offers an insight that managers can enhance customer loyalty. The process linking corporate social responsibility to corporate reputation through social capital implies that firms can realize spiritual marketing delivering authentic storytelling through corporate social responsibility. The present study has a limitation for generalizing of research results because the sampling came from a case of firm.

The paper aims to investigate the relationship between firm size and organizational actions on adopting social media for corporate reputation management. The sample group of 198 companies is selected with a simple random sample method from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) listings: Sixty nine companies were from the Fortune 500 listings, seventy one companies from the NYSE midsize capitalization and fifty eight companies from the NYSE small capitalization listings. This study employs cross tabulations and Chi-square analysis, and the Kruskal-Wallis that enables the comparison of three samples that are independent. The results of the study show that (1) large firms have more social media ownership than small firms, (2) large firms respond to social media posts at a greater frequency and quickly than small firms, and (3) firm size is less likely associated with response styles to social media for online reputation management. The results show that reply time and response styles of organizations to social media customers in the 2015 survey has no significant change compared to that of 2011. There appears to be a pervasive lack strategic framework as most firms in the study were found not to be adequately monitoring or leveraging social media communication for their reputation management.

This research seeks to improve the understanding of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its advantages in the shipping sector. Recently, an improved emphasis on CSR, which incorporates environmental and social concerns into economic considerations of firms, can be found in business management and marketing literature. This is mainly because of people’s increased awareness in regards to the negative consequences of corporate activities such as increased environmental pollution and gaps between the rich and the poor. According to the previous literature, it has been revealed that responsible actions by companies can generate positive outcomes in terms of financial and time aspects, but more importantly, intangible equity of the company, including improved corporate reputation, image as well as brand. As the regulation is intensifying in regards to environmental and social responsibility in the shipping sector, shipping companies are trying to engage in CSR to gain competitive advantages. While the reputation and image of shipping companies play essential roles for developing sustainable maritime transport, few studies have been conducted for how the CSR of shipping companies influence the shipping companies’ reputation and image relative to other industries. In this regard, this study aims to investigate the effect of the corporate social responsibility on corporate reputation and image of shipping companies on the basis of an exploratory study in the Republic of Korea. This research would be beneficial to both academics and practitioners for developing useful CSR strategies which could promote the public’s recognition of the shipping sector.