Background: In recent years, reputation has become an important risk concern for companies around the world. Deloitte Global Survey highlights the reputation risk as the top strategic business risk in 2014. This is also proven by a research conducted by AON Global Risk Management Survey in 2015 and Allianz Risk Barometer Survey in 2016 which finds a loss of reputation as one of the biggest risks for business executives. Furthermore, the importance of reputation is confirmed by the fact that reputation accounts for more than 25 percent of a company's market value and the total market capitalization of the S&P500 companies. Objectives: To investigates the relationship between corporate reputation and financial performance. Methods/Approach: The survey of the paper was conducted in 2015 in Croatia. The questionnaire for assessing corporate reputation contained three reputational dimensions: products and services, corporate integrity, and organizational performance while the financial dimensions contained indicators of EVA, ROCE, ROA, ROE and the financial stability coefficient. Hierarchical regression methods were applied in the analysis. Results: This research leads to the conclusion that some dimensions of corporate reputation can be important predictors of financial performance. Conclusions: Results of the research could be a valid motivation for business executives to consider reputation risk as a critical issue of corporate business strategy.

The article investigates the relationship between commitment to business ethics and nonfinancial business performance. Data of commitment to business ethics and nonfinancial business performance were collected from 100 participants through a questionnaire survey. The survey was conducted in 2015 in Croatian large and medium sized companies. The questionnaire for assessing commitment to business ethics contained nine different dimensions while the nonfinancial business performance contained three dimensions: client satisfaction, human resource management plus innovativeness and efficiency of business processes. Multiple regression methods were applied in the analysis. The empirical results of three multiple linear regression models show that certain dimension of commitment to business ethics had a positive influence on the nonfinancial performance of the companies. Motivation and rewarding policy for ethical behavior and responding to unethical behavior, as a dimension of commitment to business ethics, has distinctive effects on all three nonfinancial performance dimensions. It was also found that selecting suppliers based on the standards of ethics and compliance has a positive and strong influence on client satisfaction while using ethical criteria in the performance and efficiency evaluation of employees has a positive and significant influence on innovativeness and efficiency of business processes. This research leads to the conclusion that some dimensions of commitment to business ethics can be important predictors of nonfinancial business performance. Therefore, results of the research could be considered as valid motivation for further improvement of commitment to ethics in the business environment.

Growing recognition of significance and the impact that commitment to business ethics has on corporate performance has attracted the interest of scientific and business researchers alike. At the same time, various stakeholders including boards, senior and corporate managers, employees, customers, suppliers, investors, governments and communities have been interested in the correlation between corporate performance in non-financial terms and its commitment to business ethics which has significantly increased its importance as well as its dominant impact in business. Research of the correlation of business ethics and business performance is widely conducted in the developed countries, yet it is still rare in Western Balkans countries, including Croatia, which gave rise to the need to conduct a survey on this topic. The paper comprises preliminary research which examines critical factors that present commitment to business ethics and their influence to non-financial performance indicators of the corporations. The paper also explores why and how the commitment to business ethics can contribute to the creation of corporate values that are eventually reflected in non-financial terms. The paper intends to give executives practical hands-on advice about the benefits of commitment to business ethics in a highly dynamic business environment today.

No abstract