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Investigate how leaders of illegal organizations build and maintain positive reputations and how the deaths of these firms impact groups of external stakeholders.

We conduct a forensic analysis of nine firms in eight different countries by leaders who appeared to be highly successful corporate citizens but who turned out to be operating illegal Ponzi ventures.

These illegal firms built positive reputations by engaging in activities that enhanced perceptions of their firms’ perceived quality, gaining certifications and approvals from influential external individuals/organizations, engaging in philanthropic activities, and affiliating with high-status actors. Death of these nine firms had profoundly impacted external stakeholders resulting in investor devastation, a toxic environment of mistrust, damage to reputations of anyone affiliated with these illegal firms, and a major earthshake to the philanthropic community.

Extends Rindova et al.’s (2005) research on how leaders use signals of quality and prominence to build reputations in the context of illegal organizations. Philanthropic activities are added as a reputation-building mechanism used by illegal organizations. The results draw attention to the need to examine how the death of illegal organizations affects a variety of external stakeholders, both individuals and organizations.

Leaders of illegal firms can be quite successful in building positive reputations and this success exacerbates the negative consequences that occur when the firms collapse.

Provides a qualitative study of reputation building and the extensive impact on stakeholders of the dissolution of illegal ventures.

When a crisis occurs, do corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities protect organizational reputation by buffering negative effects or do CSR activities intensify negative effects, potentially leading to a worse reputation compared to if the organization had no prior CSR engagement? The authors hypothesize that if a crisis emerges in a domain aligned with an organization’s CSR initiatives (crisis-congruent CSR) backfire effects would arise, adversely affecting the organization’s reputation. Conversely, in cases of incongruence, where the crisis emerges in a domain not aligned with an organization’s previous CSR involvement, a buffering effect would manifest, protecting the organization’s reputation.

The authors conducted an experiment with a 3 (crisis-congruent, crisis-incongruent, and no CSR activities) × 2 (repeated measures) mixed factorial design. In the first scenario, no information was provided concerning a company’s social commitment. Alternatively, participants were exposed to an article illustrating the company’s dedication either to healthcare (crisis-incongruent commitment) or to combating sexism (crisis-congruent commitment). Afterward, participants were presented with a newspaper article addressing allegations of sexism against the company’s CEO.

The findings demonstrate that prior CSR activities have the potential both to serve as a buffer and to cause backfire effects in times of crisis. Domain congruence is the decisive moderator of these effects: Crisis-incongruent CSR activities acted as a buffer, crisis-congruent CSR activities “backfired” and led to more negative perceptions of the company’s reputation.

The study directly contributes to the understanding of CSR effects in crisis communication, while also addressing the often paradoxical and contradictory findings of prior studies.

Scholarship on reputation in and of organizations has been going on for decades, and it always has separated along level of analysis issues, whereby the separate literatures on individual, group/team/unit, and organization reputation fail to acknowledge each other. This sends the implicit message that reputation is a fundamentally different phenomenon at the three different levels of analysis. We tested the validity of this implicit assumption by conducting a multilevel review of the reputation literature, and drawing conclusions about the “level-specific” or “level-generic” nature of the reputation construct. The review results permitted the conclusion that reputation phenomena are essentially the same at all levels of analysis. Based on this, we frame a future agenda for theory and research on reputation.

The public sector worldwide is under pressure to downsize, which has led to mergers of public sector organisations. This paper seeks to bridge the unstudied gap of what happens to organisational reputation after a merger. The paper discusses change and reputation in the public sector, and reports findings of a longitudinal study on stakeholder assessments of four public sector organisations undergoing mergers recently.

Following a theory-driven content analysis, this longitudinal study compares stakeholder assessments of four public sector organisations' reputations a year before an organisational merger with assessments of the two resulting organisations' reputations two years after the merger.

The paper finds that the mergers did not really re-shape reputation, but the once established reputation persevered. Although the organisations faced greater expectations after the merger, only minor changes in reputation were detected post-merger: the reputation for expertise, heavy bureaucracy and trustworthiness remained strong after the merger, but certain traits, such as being international and esteemed, were lost. In both cases, one organisation's prior reputation slightly dominated the new reputation.

The findings may be limited to Finland and other Nordic countries, as well as those countries where trust in the public sector is high.

Mergers may not change once-established reputations, and hence the improvements desired by mergers may go unnoticed by the different stakeholders. Organisations merging must prepare for increased stakeholder expectations, as the new organisations arise questions. Previous organisational traits may remain in stakeholders' assessments despite any achieved improvements.

This paper addresses the gap in studying organisational reputation after public sector mergers, and contributes to both theory and practice by providing insight into the stability of once-established reputations.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual model that can be used to bridge organizational identity and reputation messages. The proposed model may help organizations more-effectively build and maintain both their desired identity as well as reputation.

The qualitative and exploratory procedure was used to develop a model for simultaneously managing and measuring both identity and reputation messages. The process of conceptualizing an exploratory, qualitative value model begins with identifying relevant concepts and measures. A qualitative review of reputation and identity scholarship was examined for recurring themes and concepts. These themes were then used to formulate the identity and reputation functions and value measures.

The proposed conceptual model presents characteristics and attributes that scholars and practitioners may need to consider when managing an organization’s identity and reputation messages online. The paper also presents potential applications of the model.

The proposed qualitative value model, if further tested and quantified, has three potential applications: integrating identity and reputation messages across multiple platforms; telling stories reflective of both identity and reputation messages; and determining the value of attribution across contingencies.

Considering the interrelated nature of identity and reputation messages, it is necessary to formulate a model delineating how the two may be bridged with one another. By proposing the conceptual model for how organizations may be able to align their identity messages with reputation messages, this paper hopes to establish a more conscious connection between the identity and reputation scholarship.

When organizations face a crisis that is a result of a transgression, crisis scholars suggest that the organization should apologize in order to accept responsibility for the event. In turn, this is expected to reduce the reputation damage to the organization. The assumption is that an apology statement is interpreted by stakeholders to be equal to accepting responsibility; however, this assumption has not been empirically examined. This paper seeks to address that gap.

A three (explicitness of accepting responsibility: none, implicit, explicit) by two (expressing regret: none, explicit) between subjects design was employed. Participants read an article about a crisis event, answered questions about perceived reputation, read one of six organizational responses, and responded to questions about reputation and anger caused by the response.

Results indicate that both accepting responsibility and expressing regret affect perceptions of reputation after a crisis and the anger felt by respondents. Additionally, apologies need an explicit statement of responsibility to increase their benefits for the organization.

Implications of this research include understanding the independent effects that accepting responsibility, expressing regret, and anger have on organizational reputation. Results can be useful for both academics and practitioners when thinking about how to respond to a crisis. Different strengths and limitations are discussed in the text.

The paper tests the assumption that an organizational apology is viewed as equal to accepting responsibility and explores some of the basic propositions of situational crisis communication theory. This study is also one of the first to examine the impact of the crisis response on stakeholder anger.

This chapter examines how leaders can utilize a clear values framework to signal what they want their organization’s reputation to be as well as design their organization to help ensure that what happens in the organization lives up to those espoused values. Reputations are, of course, built up among both internal and external audiences, and work must be done to ensure that neither audience develops negative impressions about the organization’s reputation.

Key to this reputation development and management is consistency between espoused values and enacted values. While many organizations have espoused values, it can be difficult to embed them into the foundational practices of an organization; if they are not enacted, this can lead to direct reputational harm. Building them in fully means clearly enacting the espoused values with structures (the systems and rules), people (who is hired, supported, and excluded), and culture (the environment in which the organization operates). Values frameworks are therefore posited as the foundation upon which to build organizations which can lead to warding off potential reputational calamities in the first place, minimizing the impacts of reputational harms that do take place, and bouncing back more strongly in the wake of hits to an organization’s reputation.

Organizations are increasingly required to take up extended responsibilities for social and environmental outcomes, including in global value chains. To address these challenges, the organization must call upon stakeholders to engage, contribute, and innovate, and in turn, this requires the organization to have a stronger social basis for its relationships. An integrative model of global value chain management based on social cooperation shifts the focus from corporate reputation to value chain reputation, from a firm-centric view of corporate reputation to a multistakeholder conception of value chain reputation. This approach conceptualizes reputation as a dynamic and potentially vulnerable organizational feature which cannot always be managed by public relations but requires a more stable notion grounded in something more permanent in the organization’s character, history, and the quality of its relationships with stakeholders. We consider the prospects for attending to organizational integrity as a stabilizing force for its public reputation. Integrity may be adopted as a hypernorm for motivating stakeholders who share a concern for the organization’s reputation. Co-creating reputation depends upon a social bond of cooperation developed by stakeholders caring about the organization and in turn, the organization caring about its stakeholders. This socialized understanding of reputation-building is grounded in an ethic of care and manifested through joint purposes, boundary-crossing processes, collaboration practices, and a division of labor into which value chain members are integrated and brought into relation with one another. We propose a model of global value chain management that discusses organizational capabilities required for such an approach.

This study aims to investigate the direct effect of organizational reputation (OR), employer brand (EB) and organizational attributes (OA) on the intention to apply for a job vacancy (IAJV); further, it examined the mediating effect of employer brand in the OA-IAJV relationship while taking into consideration the moderating effect of organizational reputation.

A mixed-method approach was employed, with ten in-depth interviews followed by a questionnaire with additional 356 job seekers in Cairo and Giza cities; the sample includes both fresh graduates and experienced job applicants in the job market. The qualitative analysis confirmed that some respondents use organizational reputation as a signal of its performance. The path analysis technique tests the research hypotheses using a partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The findings revealed that the most influential variable in the intention to apply is organizational attributes, followed by organizational reputation and finally employer brand. There is a significant relationship between organizational attributes and intention to apply for a job vacancy via employer brand. In addition, the results indicate a noteworthy moderating impact of organizational reputation on the association between employer brand intentions to apply for a job and the relationship between organizational attributes and intention to apply for a job opening.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study contributes to the understanding of the direct and indirect effects of organizational reputation and organizational attributes on intention to apply through the mediating role of the employer brand. This research opens new avenues for recruitment research, considering the moderating effect of organizational reputation on strengthening the impact of the independent variables on the intention to apply and the interaction between the variables affecting the intention. Further, this study focuses on the needs of the job applicants when perceiving the organizational factors and identifies which signals can generate the intention to apply according to the signaling theory.

High-quality workforce is the most important source for competitive advantage, and thus all organizations attempt to attract and recruit young talents. This study aims to examine the relationships between corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate reputation and intention to apply for a job in young individuals.

For empirical analysis, this study uses data collected from final-year students and fresh graduates in a developing city. This study uses structural equation modelling (SEM) to test the research model.

CSR is found to be positively and directly associated with intention to apply for a job. CSR is also positively and indirectly associated with intention to apply through the mediation of corporate reputation.

This study underscores the importance of CSR practices in enhancing corporate reputation and attracting talented young candidates. Accordingly, organizations can gain their competitive edge in a highly competitive environment.

This study suggests that organizations should be more concerned about CSR practices for the sake of corporate reputation as well as community development.

This study is among the early attempts to examine the direct and indirect relationships between CSR, corporate reputation and intention to apply for a job in a developing city. The findings add to the growing literature suggesting that CSR may help organizations achieve competitive advantage regarding the attraction of prospective young talents.