We examined the extent to which organizations' reputations encompass different types of stakeholders' perceptions, which may have differential effects on economic outcomes. Specifically, we propose that reputation consists of two dimensions: (1) stakeholders' perceptions of an organization as able to produce quality goods and (2) organizations' prominence in the minds of stakeholders. We empirically examined the distinct antecedents and consequences of these two dimensions of reputation in the context of U.S. business schools. Results suggest that prominence, which derives from the choices of influential third parties vis-à -vis an organization, contributes significantly to the price premium associated with having a favorable reputation.

I nnovation researchers recognize that the uncertainty with regard to the value-creating potential of product innovations increases with their technological novelty, and have argued that the usefulness and value of novel products are socially constructed. Despite this recognition, researchers have not explored how the outer form in which a technological innovation is embodied influences the processes through which the innovation's value is constructed and perceived. In this paper we argue that by embodying novel technologies in objects with specific functional, symbolic, and aesthetic properties, innovating firms also endow their products with cues that trigger a variety of cognitive and emotional responses. Drawing on psychological research we articulate how such cognitive and emotional responses underlie initial perceptions of value and theorize how innovating firms can influence them through product form design. Our framework explains how product form contributes to perceptions of value by modulating the actual technological novelty of a product innovation and facilitating how customers cope with it. Our theoretical framework makes an important contribution to innovation research and practice because it articulates how product form can be used strategically to achieve specific cognitive and emotional effects and enhance the initial customer perceptions of the value of an innovation.

While strategy and organizational researchers increasingly recognize that observers' perceptions and beliefs about firms have a substantive effect on firms' access to resources and performance, the processes through which these perceptions form are not well understood. To address this question, we examined how three new firms -Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com and CDNow -that entered the emerging e-commerce domain in the mid-1990s built their initial reputations in the media. Given the limited theory and empirical evidence about the process of reputation accumulation by new firms in emerging markets, we used the case study method to develop inductively a model that relates the visible external actions of the three firms to the patterns of media coverage they accumulated. Patterns of media coverage are likely to both reflect and affect the process of reputation accumulation, as the media constitute an influential audience of critics, who first form their own perceptions and opinions, thereby reflecting the process of reputation accumulation, and then disseminate these perceptions and opinions to the public, thereby influencing the perceptions and opinions of other stakeholder audiences. Our analysis indicates that the pattern of market actions of new firms influences the pattern of media coverage they receive in terms of levels (visibility), content (strategic character), tenor (favorability) and distinction (esteem).The observed inter-firm differences in these characteristics of received coverage suggest that reputation may be better understood as a composite construct and that firms' reputational assets may vary in their composition. Our study offers an inductively developed process model that relates the market actions of new firms to the accumulation of the different components of their initial reputations in the media. Key words • intangible assets • market actions • media studies • new ventures • reputationNew firms face considerable challenges in convincing stakeholders to exchange resources with them because 'the quality of a new venture is always a matter of some debate ' (Stuart et al., 1999: 315). By developing a reputation a new firm can reduce stakeholders' uncertainty about its quality because reputation, defined as the collective knowledge about and regard for the firm in its organizational field (Fombrun, 1996;Ferguson et al., 2000;Rindova et al., 2005), can provide stakeholders with assurance about the firm's ability to create value (Rindova and Fombrun, 1999). How a new firm can build reputation, however, remains a relatively unexplored research question because extant reputation research studies primarily established firms that compete in well-defined industries with known players (Fombrun and Shanley, 1990;Deephouse, 2000;Tsai, 2000;Rindova et al., 2005). This research has shown that a firm can build its reputation through persistent investments in a variety of relevant signals, including levels of financial performance, patterns of resource deployment and endorsements from high-status or...

A significant body of research has examined how new organizations gain legitimacy and how gaining it affects their subsequent access to resources. Less attention has been given to the problem of how new organizations attract collective attention. Although related to legitimation, the problem of attracting attention is distinct, as attention and evaluation are distinct cognitive processes. In this study, we examine the allocation of collective attention to new organizations in a system of relationships, within which new organizations seek to attract attention through their sensegiving activities; the information properties of their sensegiving activities affect the level of attention they receive from different types of media; and media attention, in turn, increases their perceived value potential in the eyes of venture capital investors (VCs). We examine these relationships in a sample of 398 information-technology start-ups that have obtained different levels of venture capital funding. Our results show that new organizations that engage in more intense and diverse sensegiving activities attract higher levels of industry media attention and that these effects are enhanced by the human capital of their founders and leaders. Diverse sensegiving activities are also associated with higher levels of attention from the general media, but only the attention of specialized industry media is positively associated with the level of VC funding obtained. These findings extend current research on information intermediation and institutional legitimation by demonstrating that media attention early in the life of new organizations affects how they are valued by a well-informed expert audience, such as VCs. They also contribute to entrepreneurship research on the effects of new organizations’ strategies on their ability to secure resources and to research on VC funding decisions.

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