Corporate Reputation and Corporate Ethics: Looking Good or Doing Well

Abstract

Corporate reputation (CR) has become a fashionable topic due, among other reasons, to the recent financial and economic crisis and spreading corporate scandals. Given its interdisciplinary character and intangible nature, CR has been a frequent issue in many disciplines, but scarcely present in the business ethics field. This neglect is odd since a good reputation is one of the most valuable consequences of doing the right things and the things right. In this paper, we intend to explain this absence through three hypotheses: a) business ethics literature largely identifies corporate reputation and corporate social responsibility; b) corporate reputation overlaps with corporate image and corporate identity, resulting interchangeable constructs; and c) business ethics scholars have focused on the negative side of the reputation phenomenon, highlighting reputational risk more than benefits.Based on a bibliometric analysis of the top journal of business ethics literature over a recent decade (2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011), we finally confirmed the three hypotheses although c) only partially. In addition, the findings of this study will allow for a deeper understanding of the link between looking good and doing well. Ricardo Leiva AbstractCorporate reputation (CR) has become a fashionable topic due, among other reasons, to the recent financial and economic crisis and spreading corporate scandals. Given its interdisciplinary character and intangible nature, CR has been a frequent issue in many disciplines, but scarcely present in the business ethics field. This neglect is odd since a good reputation is one of the most valuable consequences of doing the right things and the things right. In this paper, we intend to explain this absence through three hypotheses: a) business ethics literature largely identifies corporate reputation and corporate social responsibility; b) corporate reputation overlaps with corporate image and corporate identity, resulting interchangeable constructs; and c) business ethics scholars have focused on the negative side of the reputation phenomenon, highlighting reputational risk more than benefits.Based on a bibliometric analysis of the top journal of business ethics literature over a recent decade (2002-2011), we finally confirmed the three hypotheses although c) only partially. In addition, the findings of this study will allow for a deeper understanding of the link between looking good and doing well.

Impacts of Code of Ethics on Financial Performance in the Italian Listed Companies of Bank Sector

“…An ethical conduct improves relations of the firm with its external stakeholders, in terms of both perception and communication. It also allows a better regulation of the internal stakeholders' behavior, creating evident advantages of cost and resource implementation (Leiva et al, 2014). In addition, the higher performing companies accomplish these better ratios because they take much care of the stakeholders' expectations, demonstrating in this way a higher propensity toward honesty, sincerity and trust.…”

“…In order to sustain and improve profitability, managers now have to focus especially on social responsibility toward stakeholders (Mobin et al, 2015), that horizontally crosses and influences all the other five pillars (financial performance, in particular). however, despite the evident interest, reputation analysis has been omitted by scholars in the banking sector, as long as fraud cases and scandals have underlined its relevance, in particular its linkages with ethics (Skowron and Kristensen, 2012;Leiva et al, 2014). In this construct, the paper aims at strengthening some studies that consider corporate social responsibility both a predictor and a consequence of firm financial performance.…”

Examining the mediating role of organizational trust in the relationship between CSR practices and job outcomes

“…CSR has become an integral part of most organizations in India given the inclusion of Schedule VII under The Companies Act, 2013 which encourages corporates to spend a minimum of 2 per cent of their average net profit on CSR activities (Gandhi and Kaushik, 2016). By investing in CSR, organizations get immense benefits, such as enhanced reputation (Du et al, 2010;Leiva et al, 2014), engaged consumers, motivated employees, (Leiva et al, 2014), increased shareholders' investments (Mishra and Suar, 2010) and financial returns (Cheng et al, 2014).…”

Impact of corporate social responsibility intensity on corporate reputation and financial performance of Indian firms

“…In a nutshell, CR comprises of a holistic assessment of the organization's image formed by stakeholder's personal views (Whetten and Mackey 2002). CR is affected by financial soundness, quality of management, and CSR (Leiva et al 2014). Firms can hence make an effort to influence their reputation by going for corporate social reporting (Pérez 2015).…”