Higher education institutions are facing increased national and international competition for research talent and research funds (OECD, 2009). The best way for a university to react to this situation is to foster its reputation. Not only for firms (Raithel & Schwaiger, 2015), but also for universities, reputation is one of the most valuable intangible assets (Albers, 2015). Therefore, this study investigates the drivers of business school reputation as perceived by academics. The impact of the following potential drivers is analyzed in this study: research performance, third-party research funds and standing of professors within the academic community. We used the variable research reputation from the business school ranking of the Centrum für Hochschulentwicklung (CHE) as a proxy for reputation. In addition, also the variable sum of third-party funds was available from the CHE dataset. Furthermore, we measured professors’ standing in the academic community by considering if they are outstanding members in the two major German research communities and if they are in the editorial board of one of the A+ or A ranked journals according to the vhb-jourqual ranking. Moreover, we measured research performance by means of the score of the faculty achieved in the Handelsblatt Rankings Faculties as well by means of the publication output per faculty member. Besides, the previous score of the CHE ranking was included to control for path dependency of reputation (Gray & Balmer, 1998). As additional control variables, the size of the business school, the research reputation of the host university (measured as the number of Nobel-price winners from the university) and the size of the city (measured by the number of inhabitants) were used. Research performance as measured by the Handelsblatt Ranking accounts for 31% of current reputational assessment. The influence of third-party funds as well as professors’ standing within the academic community could not be confirmed. Moreover, city size was found to be correlated to reputation. The obvious explanation would be that large cities are able to attract better researchers (be it for quality of life or because universities in large cities offer more attractive compensation schemes), which in turn leads to a higher research productivity – an important driver for academics’ reputational assessments of a business school.

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.