The Primary Importance of Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethicality in Corporate Reputation: An Empirical Study

Abstract

We examine three assumptions commonly held in the corporate reputation literature: (1) reputation ratings of owners and investors are generally representative of all stakeholders; (2) stakeholders will generally provide a higher reputation rating to firms that emphasize corporate social responsibility versus firms that do not; and (3) profitability is the primary criterion of importance to all stakeholders when rating a firm's reputation. Using an exploratory in-class exercise, our findings suggest that:(1) there are significant differences among stakeholder groups in their reputation ratings; (2) firms that emphasize corporate social responsibility are not rated more highly across all stakeholder groups; and (3) for all stakeholder groups, the ethicality criterion explained Kent Walker is Assistant Professor,

Linking cause assessment, corporate philanthropy, and corporate reputation

“…First, while our findings support the notion that stakeholder groups differ in their reputation ratings (Walker and Dyck 2014), we advance the understanding of this relationship by offering a more granular analysis. Specifically, we separately examine customers and noncustomers, who were aggregated in previous research (see Walker and Dyck 2014), and find that non-customers rate socially responsible firms higher than do customers.…”

“…H2: Attitude toward a company's philanthropy will be associated with the perception of that company in terms of (a) Customer Orientation (b) being a Good Employer, (c) (Hillenbrand et al 2012;Walker and Dyck 2014). In this regard, we differentiate between customers of the philanthropic company and non-customers.…”

“…Specifically, we separately examine customers and noncustomers, who were aggregated in previous research (see Walker and Dyck 2014), and find that non-customers rate socially responsible firms higher than do customers.…”

“…Hillenbrand and Money (2007) Bhattacharya and Sen 2003) or on customer-based corporate reputation (e.g., Walsh et al 2009), yet it has overlooked the link between cause assessment, corporate philanthropy, and corporate reputation. Second, our research follows the call for a more nuanced understanding of corporate reputation (Walker and Dyck 2014). By focusing on specific dimensions of corporate reputation and by analyzing customers and non-customers, our study offers a granular analysis of the relationship between CP and corporate reputation.…”

Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Social Innovation: A Conceptual Understanding

“…For these organizations, CSR successfully creates a favourable corporate image and positive relationship on improving organization image in the eyes of the society at all level [23]. A study by [24] acknowledge that by getting a good corporate reputation through engagement in CSR activities does not necessarily shows organization is having a good financial performance. Furthermore, studies by [25,26,27] on CSR activities and environmental sustainability also explained the above notion.…”