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This paper aims to examine whether firms in polluting industries improve their environmental performance to effectively repair their financial reputation in the aftermath of an accounting restatement – a financial reputation-damaging event.

The authors test their hypotheses using multiple regression analysis of a sample of firms listed in International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)-adopting countries. They use a comparative empirical design in which a sample of firms that underwent a restatement (henceforth, restating firms) are compared with control groups of pair- and multiple-matched firms that did not undergo restatements (non-restating firms).

The study finds that restating firms have higher environmental performance in the aftermath of restatement events. Additionally, the authors demonstrate that this environmentally based reputation repair positively influences the financial reputation of the firms, as measured by analyst coverage and recommendations and which previously decreased because of the restatement event.

Because environmental levers are a substantial contextual factor in polluting industries, shifting the stakeholder debate to firms’ environmental commitment can improve financial stakeholders’ opinions and favour the repair of the multifaceted reputation of the financially damaged firm.

With a worldwide growing attention to environment there is a critical need for understanding how polluting firms integrate sustainability and financial reputation. We demostrate that polluting firms recover from a financial failure pursuing their environmental performance.

Contributing to the behavioural theory of reputation repair and in line with the legitimacy perspective in environmental disclosure research, this paper shows that polluting firms recover from a loss to their financial reputation by diverting stakeholders’ attention towards the environmental field, thus restoring their financial reputation, as financial analysts value environmental performance improvement – a substantial contextual factor of polluting firms’ reputation repair process.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a literature review of the underdeveloped stream of research that analyses corporate reputation as an outcome of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting.

The author systematically reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the CSR reporting-reputation relationship, identify several gaps in the body of knowledge and provide new lines of study to develop this relevant stream of research.

The literature review demonstrates that CSR reporting is especially useful to generate corporate reputation. The justification for this idea is provided by as many as five theoretical approaches, while the management of corporate transparency, information quantity and information quality is shown to be crucial to the success of CSR reporting.

The value of the paper resides in making the rather underdeveloped, heterogeneous and inconclusive literature on the CSR reporting-reputation link more accessible to CSR reporting scholars and practitioners. At the same time, suggestions are provided for future research that would contribute to improving the knowledge on the relationship between CSR reporting and corporate reputation.

The purpose of this paper is to provide context for and a preview of the content for the special issue on corporate apologia.

The methodology is a review of literature relevant to crisis communication and the role of apologia within this body of literature.

Apologia, a rhetoric of self‐defense, has a strong connection in the creation and development of crisis communication. Current research is moving beyond the parameters of apologia but it remains a strong influence on the field. Future crisis communication research needs to explore further the role of emotion if crisis communication and the implications of international crisis communication. The various contributions the articles in the special issue provide for crisis communication are reviewed as a means of previewing the special issue.

The paper provides lessons that crisis managers can apply when they need to communicate during a crisis.

The paper provides insights into the development of crisis communication and the role of apologia in that development.

The conclusions on the importance of corporate response timing to a crisis have remained inconsistent. Some studies suggest that active response may reduce negative impacts, whereas managers argue that issuing official response frustrates stakeholders and thus decreases the firm value. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of external media in the response timing strategy and the consequent stock market reaction.

Based on 130 corporate crises that befell publicly listed firms in China from 2007 to 2014, this paper uses the Baidu News Search Engine and Chinese Lexical Analysis System to construct the variables of the media characteristics. A structural equation model is established to test the hypotheses.

The results of this paper suggest that media coverage drives response timing after a crisis. Although an official response is a burden for firms, the timing strategy has multidimensional benefits including effectively alleviating negative effects (defined as buffering effects) and repairing the market (defined as restoring effects). Moreover, the buffering effects of response timing are stronger when completeness of response is low.

This study mainly contributes to crisis communication literature by introducing the role of media in prompting managers to make timing decisions. The findings of this study provide empirical support for the importance of timing response strategy.

This paper investigates the legitimacy tactics used in the annual reports of UK listed companies in the aftermath of major corporate scandals.

We carried out a content analysis of annual reports of 19 companies that have been involved in corporate scandals with a view to understand how firms communicate negative scandals affecting them.

The findings reveal that firms use a wide range of legitimisation strategies in the manner that contribute to shape disclosure communications concerning negative incidents. For instance, some firms may offset the negativity linked to an incident by rendering such explanations amidst positive information.

Contrary to earlier studies conducted on accounting scandals, the authors incorporated extensive corporate scandals such as human rights violations, controversies concerning child labour, environmental scandals, corruption, financial embezzlement and tax evasion.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of climate change rating organisations on rated firms, to understand whether disclosure ratings can facilitate enhanced emissions performance.

This study uses 1,848 cross-country firm-year observations from organisations that responded to the carbon disclosure project (the rater) between 2011 and 2015 and, hence, were rated for their disclosure. Drawing on the ideology of numbers, this paper hypothesises that the disciplinary power of ratings will result in rated firms improving their subsequent disclosure scores. Following the environmentally-friendly ideology, this study hypothesises that poorly-rated firms will adopt decoupling behaviour, by improving their climate change disclosure scores without reducing the intensity of their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The results indicate that climate change disclosure ratings pressure poorly-rated firms to improve their disclosure scores in subsequent years, yet these firms are not inclined to lower their GHG emissions. Further, the direct publication of firms’ GHG emissions intensity can exert some restricted disciplinary impact on rated firms, as the more polluting firms tend to improve their subsequent climate change performance compared with those having lower emissions levels.

This paper argues that the ability of corporate sustainability rating schemes to influence corporate behaviour comprehensively is limited and should be used with caution.

This paper sheds new light on the ideological dynamics at play between the rater and the rated, while highlighting new aspects of the power-rating nexus in the climate change arena.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the effectiveness of image-repair strategies adopted by organizations to restore their public image and reputation following crisis situations, the lessons learned from these cases and the significance of contextual factors that are likely to affect image-repair efforts and strategies adopted.

Three cases have been reviewed in this paper: Weather, Jordan; Nestlé Waters, Jordan; and Victoria College School, Jordan. Information was obtained from published materials, such as YouTube commentaries, local newspapers and online news agents, primarily the Jordan Times, which is considered the number one daily in the country. The discussion of these cases is original and based on academic theory and literature.

Organizations differ in terms of the ways they respond to corporate crises and the strategies they are likely to adopt to restore/recover their reputation and public image.

Corporate reputation or public image is an asset that is built over time. Organizations within all industries seek to secure positive images in the minds of people. The image of an organization however can be threatened by crises. Trust and public image decline when stakeholders feel they have not been adequately informed in times of crises regarding the different attributes of the situation or how the organization is dealing with the crisis. Organizations have the choice to adopt one image-repair strategy at a time or a combination of strategies according to the requirements of the situation.

Image-repair strategies have been examined in American and European contexts but have, to the author’s knowledge, never been examined in the context of Arab organizations and more specifically in the context of Jordanian organizations. This paper therefore provides a new insight into how to apply these strategies in a unique and new context and will also motivate future research in this regard.

To present the continuation of a case study by Beck et al. (2017) on an Australian bank (CBD) during the period 2004–2013 by examining whether integrated reporting affects relational capital and helps to repair an organisations’ reputation. Both studies examine how a bank rocked by a major scandal in 2004 has attempted to repair its legitimacy through integrated reporting (<IR>). The paper aims to discuss these issue.

This study is a post facto analysis based on the original research from Beck et al. (2017). The research process involved a case study approach with an analysis framed by impression management theory to investigate whether the information in CBD’s integrated reports is consistent with other information available to investors.

The authors find there is a gap between what CBD discloses in its integrated reports and what is publicly available in other media. CBD’s talk and actions are not aligned, and that asymmetry translates into a decline of trust in CBD. The bank’s integrated reports reveal how management discloses or withholds information to protect their own interests and at their own discretion. These conclusions indicate that the integrated reporting paradigm is being co-opted by IM strategies to improve legitimacy through trust, reputation and social capital.

Future research needs to reach beyond the organisational boundaries and understand if <IR> adds value for society, or is just a new form of multicapitalism, being an ideology to help the rich become richer? The answers are important if we ever hope to see misconduct disappear from our corporations and for company reports to become documents bearing truth and not espouse rhetoric based on organisational hypocrisy.

The paper adds to the growing body of research investigating <IR> in practice to understand the impact of <IR> and whether it is a new and useful reporting tool or just another management fashion.

One purpose of this paper is to emphasize the relationship between employees as brand ambassadors and the concept of an employer brand. Another is to consider cross-cultural employer branding in the context of global talent management. The authors also clarify the connection between organizational image, organizational identity and organizational reputation, and address how positive and negative brand reputation can affect an organization.

The authors use a literature review of findings with respect to topics such as competitive strategy and constructs from the literature on employer branding to identify some key research questions to address. They then consider cross-cultural employer branding and brand repair in the context of talent management, along with more key questions to address in each area.

A positive employer brand – with its strong contribution to brand reputation and to helping organizations attract and retain top talent to gain competitive advantage – is a key ingredient for organizational success. Employees are employer-brand ambassadors. Constant awareness of and attention to one’s employer brand can prevent a brand disaster. The payoff is that preventing damage to the reputation of one’s employer brand is much easier than repairing damage to it.

The purpose is to challenge researchers to think critically and analytically about employer branding, especially in the cross-cultural context. The editor plans to invite commentaries on this paper.

Es una revisión de la literatura. Tomando en consideración los resultados existentes se propone un proceso en tres etapas para ayudar a las empresas a recuperarse del efecto negativo en la marca de empleador resultante de conductas inapropiadas. Al final de cada sección se identifican cuestiones de investigación para el futuro.

Los autores llevan a cabo una revisión de la literatura sobre la marca de empleador, para resumir lo que se conoce e identificar preguntas de investigación que no han sido analizadas hasta el momento.

Los autores señalan la importancia estratégica de la marca de empleador y su efecto en la capacidad para competir en el mercado de talento. Se propone un proceso en tres etapas para ayudar a las empresas a recuperarse del efecto negativo en la marca de empleador resultante de conductas inapropiadas. Aún existen numerosas preguntas de investigación sin respuesta.

El artículo propone un proceso en tres etapas para ayudar a las empresas a recuperarse del efecto negativo en la marca de empleador resultante de conductas inapropiadas, e identifica preguntas de investigación a analizar en estudios futuros.

Marca de empleador, marca inter-cultural, reputación de marca, reparación de la marca, revisión de la literatura

Tipo de artículo – Artículo de investigación

É una revisão da literatura. Considerando os resultados existentes, se propõe um processo em três etapas para ajudar as empresas a se recuperar do efeito negativo na marca do empregador resultante de condutas inapropriadas. Ao final de cada seção se identificam questões de investigação para o futuro.

Os autores levam a cabo una revisão da literatura sobre a marca do empregador, para resumir o que se conhece e identificar perguntas de investigação que não foram analisadas até o momento.

Os autores destacam a importância estratégica da marca do empregador e seu efeito na capacidade para competir no mercado de talento. Se propõe um processo em três etapas para ajudar as empresas a se recuperar do efeito negativo na marca do empregador resultante de condutas inapropriadas. Ainda existem numerosas preguntas de investigação sem resposta.

O artigo propõe um processo em três etapas para ajudar as empresas a se recuperar do efeito negativo na marca do empregador resultante de condutas inapropriadas, e identifica preguntas de investigação a analisar em estudos futuros.

Marca do empregador, marca intercultural, reputação da marca, reparação da marca, revisão da literatura

Tipo de artículo – Artigo de investigação

Corporate reputation has never been more valuable – or more vulnerable. All of the corporate malfeasance of the past few years in the US not only showed how precious and fleeting reputation is, but it also demonstrated how one company’s misdeeds taint an entire industry. Some businesses with superb reputations have found themselves unfairly lumped with the pack of fraudulent companies, and some executives have been dismayed to learn that they are viewed as greedy and unprincipled. One of the most important rules of reputation management is the need for constant vigilance. Companies today are exposed to unprecedented scrutiny through the Internet and 24‐hour all‐news television channels. Business is truly global and information, especially gossip, travels fast. Many people mistakenly equate reputation with corporate social responsibility and ethical behavior. While certainly of growing importance, ethics and social responsibility are but two elements of the equation. Financial performance, the workplace, quality of products and services, corporate leadership, and vision also figure into reputation. There’s also that elusive emotional bond between a company and its stakeholders that is central to the most enduring reputations. If they ever hope to maximize the value of their reputations, companies must make reputation management a fundamental part of the corporate culture and value system. Companies must spread the message of reputation management throughout the organization and make employees cognizant of how each and every one of them affects reputation on a daily basis. Reputation must be central to the corporate identity, not merely clever image advertising and manipulative public‐relations ploys.