Search results

Once established, a strong reputation is not indestructible. To protect this intangible asset, the process of reputation damage needs to be explained. Drawing on the irresponsibility and crisis communication literature, this study seeks to better understand this process. Specifically, this study aims to show how moral anger and distrust mediate the relationship between the awareness of an irresponsible incident and organisational reputation.

This study examined the proposed conceptual model in the empirical context of retailers bending the law. A large survey (n = 991) on consumer responses to retailers’ misbehaviour was used to collect data. The hypotheses were tested using Hayes’ PROCESS macro.

The study revealed that the mere awareness of corporate misbehaviour is not enough to directly harm accumulated positive information about a firm. Discrete emotions of moral anger and distrust fully mediate the effects of knowledge about wrongdoing. The irresponsibility appraisal is a moderator of this process that substantially changes the impacts of misbehaviour on organisational reputation.

By demonstrating how moral anger and distrust mediate the effects of misbehaviour awareness and identifying a boundary condition, this study advances our understanding of how corporate wrongdoing affects organisational reputation.

This study aims to outline the role of causal attributions in consumer responses to irresponsible corporate behaviour. Specifically, this paper presents a moderated mediation model that explains how four types of perceived motives behind an irresponsible action shape corporate blame and word-of-mouth recommendations.

To test the hypotheses, the study uses data from a large survey assessing consumer reactions to a real case of corporate socially irresponsible behaviour in the banking industry.

The findings show that market-, unethicality- and rogue employee-driven attributions increase corporate blame and subsequently make people more likely to spread negative comments regarding the culprit. The difficult situation of a bank, as a perceived reason for wrongdoing, does not reduce the blame attributed to the irresponsible organisation.

The literature offers little information on the attributions people make following egregious corporate behaviour; however, such cognitions can play an important role in stakeholders’ reactions to wrongdoing. This study therefore extends the understanding of how irresponsibility attributions affect consumers’ responses to misbehaviour. Given the empirical context, the findings might be particularly important for communication and bank managers.

This study examines how potentially irresponsible banking operations affect organisational reputation. A moderated mediation model is applied to explain how major aspects of social irresponsibility affect the relationship between consumer awareness of allegedly irresponsible operations, blame and bank reputation. The empirical context is the Swiss franc mortgage crisis that affected the banking industry in most Central and Eastern European countries.

The research study uses data collected from a large survey (N = 1,000) conducted among Polish bank consumers, including those with mortgage loans in Swiss francs. To test the proposed model, the authors use Hayes' process macro.

The findings show that blame fully mediates the effects of corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) awareness on organisational reputation. Three facets of social irresponsibility moderate this relationship. Specifically, the perceived harm and intentionality of corporate culprits cause people to be more likely to blame a bank for the difficulties posed by indebted consumers. At the same time, the perceived complicity of consumers in misselling a mortgage reduces the level of blame and its subsequent adverse effects on bank reputation.

Although a strong reputation is crucial in the financial industry, few studies have attempted to address reputational risk from a consumer perspective. This study helps to understand how potentially irresponsible selling of a financial product can adversely affect a bank's reputation.

Literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR) posits that organisational motives underlying corporate social initiatives play a key role in stakeholder responses to these activities. However, individuals do not always make attributions. This study aims to examine when CSR attributions shape consumer reactions to CSR initiatives.

Drawing on attribution theory and relevant literature on consumer trust, this study proposes a framework for explaining when attributions shape reactions to CSR initiatives. To test this framework, the study uses data from a random sample of 512 Polish consumers.

The results show that consumer responses to corporate social initiatives are largely independent of perceived corporate motivation when a consumer has a high trust in the firm. However, a low level of initial trust triggers causal thinking and its effects. Specifically, if a firm lacks credibility, self-serving attributions negatively influence consumer outcomes of social initiatives, but they remain neutral when trust is high. Accordingly, when trust is low, other-serving attributions have greater effects on the initiative outcomes than when trust is high.

The paper provides important insights into CSR literature by showing that initial trust in the company is a salient variable that moderates the link between CSR attributions and consumer responses to these actions. This role of trust has been largely unexplored as past studies considered trust in the firm to be a key outcome of corporate social performance.

This paper has a twofold objective: (1) to examine how trust and distrust mediate the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and irresponsibility (CSI) perceptions and word of mouth recommendations; and (2) to show that moral norms moderate this mediating relationship.

Two experimental studies test the proposed model. Study 1 performs a single-factor experiment with three levels of corporate social responsibility (positive, neutral, negative) to test the mediation hypothesis (N = 180, 66% females, mean age = 22.3). Study 2 validates the mediation findings and examines the role of moral norms as moderators (N = 240, 50% females, mean age = 39.5).

Study 1 reveals that trust in the company partially mediates the effects of CSR on word of mouth (WOM) recommendations. Study 2 shows that consumers who adhere to higher moral standards follow distinct paths to negative WOM. Specifically, these consumers tend to spread negative comments when they expect the firm to behave irresponsibly. When unsure about future corporate behaviour, they are less likely to spread negative WOM.

This is the first study, to the authors' knowledge, to demonstrate how moral norms shape the effects of distrust in the corporate culprit on word of mouth recommendations. Accordingly, this research proves that conceptualising trust and distrust as separate constructs is useful in explaining consumer reactions to corporate social irresponsibility.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to outline a framework for corporate philanthropy (CP) reporting that could help differentiate between symbolic and substantive reporting; and second, to test whether the reporting practices of large corporate donors are symbolic or substantive.

First, to construct a framework for CP reporting, the authors draw from research on corporate social responsibility communication, CP and reputational capital-building. Second, the philanthropy disclosures found in non-financial reports of the largest donors from the list of Fortune 100 corporations were examined using content analysis.

The theoretical framework identifies key ingredients of disclosure quality such as goals, causes, support, partners and impacts. The empirical findings show that disclosures regarding CP are more symbolic than meaningful. The largest donors provide descriptive information regarding the CP plan that primarily focuses on projects and causes. However, they fail to provide an explicit account of their decisions and the results of their philanthropic activities.

The framework could also be applied with small changes to other communication outlets including social media and corporate websites.

This paper addresses an important gap in non-financial reporting research: the lack of a CP accounting model. To the authors’ knowledge, the framework developed in this paper represents the first conceptualization of the quality of CP disclosure that may enable scholars to differentiate symbolic from substantive CP and in this way advances the debate on CP communication. This framework can also help companies sincerely engaged in philanthropy to benefit from these activities.