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Board diversity positively impacts corporate social responsibility (CSR); however, there is limited evidence on how board diversity affects the reputation of organizations that are involved in CSR. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect board diversity has on socially responsible firms’ corporate social responsibility reputation (CSRR). The authors specifically examine this relationship because an organization’s corporate reputation may be very different to its CSRR gained through engagement in socially responsible activities.

The authors use the CSR reputation scores for the top 100 most socially responsible global companies provided by the RepTrak Database as a measure of CSRR. Board diversity measures are calculated for gender, ethnicity and education to measure their impact on social reputation. The sample for this study consists of 146 observations for the period 2013–2017.

The authors find a significant and positive relation between having a combination of women and ethnically diverse members on the board and firms’ CSRR. The authors also find a significant positive effect on CSRR when the board is composed of women and educationally diverse members.

Board diversity characteristics continue to impact organizations’ decision-making processes and their involvement in CSR activities as public stakeholders demand greater representation of females and minorities on the board. Because research on board diversity is in its infancy, the authors urge scholars to continue to investigate the impact board diversity has on an organization’s motivation to be socially responsible as well as how it affects their CSRR.

The findings of this study highlight the importance stakeholders place on an organization’s social responsibility reputation and the positive effects of board diversity in managing their CSRR.

The findings provide evidence that the composition of the board can influence a company’s engagement in CSR activities and their CSRR as perceived by its stakeholders.

This study contributes to the CSR literature by introducing the concept of CSRR. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study also extends research in the diversity literature by examining the relationship between board diversity variables and an organization’s CSRR. The findings highlight the importance of having a diverse board composed of ethnically and educationally varied individuals and provide evidence of a link between organizations’ involvement in socially responsible activities and their CSRR.

This paper aims to discuss the emergence of corporate reputational risk in terms of social media, exploring its threats to and possibilities for organizations' strategic reputation management.

Reputation risk, the possibility of damaging one's reputation, presents a threat to organizations in many ways. Little is known, however, about the connections between reputation risk management and social media as a mediated business environment. Following the latest conceptualizations of strategic reputation management and social media, the paper identifies several challenges for organizations. To make sense of this issue, the paper proposes a novel context for strategic reputation management, founded on the metaphor of ambient publicity, which involves not only social media, but also organizations and their stakeholders.

The paper argues that social media expands the spectrum of reputation risks and boosts risk dynamics, and that social media can have notable effects on corporate‐level strategic endeavors, which must be considered in order to be successful in the modern business environment. Nine tenets for corporate leaders involved in strategic reputation management are presented.

The paper offers new insights on social media's relation to reputation risk and its management. The ambient publicity, for example, has value to leaders involved in strategic reputation management when trying to identify factors characterizing the changing business environment. Understanding ambient publicity as an environment of meaning indicates that organizations, their stakeholders, and the public create a “complex narrative web” surrounding reputation. The more unified this web is, the stronger the organization is in terms of reputation risk.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extend an automated, algorithm-based analysis of online conversations of stakeholders in social media and other Internet media can be used for reputation management.

Examination of the reputation of the 5,000 companies with the largest number of employees in Germany based on communication with these companies in 350m online sources on the German-speaking Internet within one year. The method is grounded on an adapted reputation model based on Fombrun.

The central result of the study is the identification of the ideal balance between the different dimensions leading to the best overall reputation. The resulting correlation matrix with the respective correlation coefficients (according to Pearson) thus forms the basis for the optimal reputation architecture.

The discovered “optimal reputation architecture” refers to a German context. Future studies should investigate in how far the adapted model and the “optimal reputation architecture” also work for other cultures. It can be assumed that there may be differences as different dimensions, for example, sustainability, may have a different importance in other cultural contexts. Apart from the question if the “optimal reputation architecture” is also valid for other cultural contexts, the concept has to be validated for German companies as well as it is just based on the two described studies.

The method used shows that social listening can deliver valuable results for research in the field of reputation management as it expands the possibilities to investigate reputation on a large scale. The approach shows in how far scientific research can be expanded beyond classic content analysis as the number of items which can be analysed exceeds that of classic analytical approaches by far. Explicit and implicit experiences, which are the drivers of reputation, can be systematically recorded and analysed using social listening, thus delivering valuable insights in how stakeholders perceive the performance of a company in different dimensions.

Measuring the reputation on the basis of social listening is very important for practical applications in companies, because the data is available digitally and can deliver up-to-date reputation values almost in real time – so that the communication can be aligned very quickly with current events. This makes it easier to implement and control the interaction between companies and their environment in the digital space.

The classic approach in reputation management is traditional market research. It is relatively expensive and takes a relatively long time to produce results. Reputation management based on social listening digitises reputation measurement, lowers costs and delivers results in a very timely manner. It might be the future of reputation measurement. This is relevant not only for practical purposes but also for scientific approaches.

This paper aims to examine the influence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting quality and board characteristics on corporate social reputation of Chinese listed firms.

Firms chosen for this study are drawn from a social responsibility ranking list of Chinese listed firms. The social responsibility rating scores identified by this ranking list are used to measure the social reputation of firms studied. The model-testing method is used to examine hypothesised relationships between CSR reporting quality, board characteristics and corporate social reputation.

The results indicate that CSR reporting quality positively influences corporate social reputation but chief executive officer/chairman duality as a measure of board characteristics has a negative impact on corporate social reputation. Firm’s financial performance and firm size also positively influence corporate social reputation.

The relatively small sample of firms for a cross-sectional study, and the proxies constructed for various concepts to empirically test hypotheses can limit generalising findings to firms outside the social responsibility ranking list. Future studies can undertake longitudinal analysis and compare socially responsible firms with others to expand empirical findings about corporate social reputation.

This paper investigates the influences of CSR reporting quality and board characteristics on corporate social reputation in the context of a developing country, China.

The purpose of this paper is to outline a theory-based approach to defining the corporate reputation construct.

The approach taken is to describe how to create a well-formed nominal definition of a construct and then show how this definition is translated into an operational definition that guides the selection of an appropriate measure. New definitions of corporate social reputation and appropriate measures of this construct are provided to illustrate this framework.

The definitional framework used suggests that many measures of corporate social responsibility and reputation are under specified. Thus, the measures derived from these definitions are poorly constructed. The strengths and weaknesses of three new types of measure of corporate social reputation are reviewed.

For scholars the advantages of creating a well-formed definition are that it will lead to a valid measure of the construct under investigation. This will then help to better interpret what are significant findings and non-findings of empirical research.

This paper is an extension of the author’s previous work on defining the corporate reputation construct. Because what is meant by corporate social responsibility is contested amongst scholars this and related constructs need more precise definition and measurement. This paper offers a theory-based approach to achieve this aim.

Literature on the relationship between social performance and economic performance of social enterprises has long been inconclusive. This paper aims to investigate whether and, if so, how social performance contributes to economic performance of social enterprises. Specifically, drawing from the resource-based view and signalling theory, the study examines how the development of reputation, which enables social enterprises to signal the enterprises' stakeholders' commitment towards social causes, mediates the relationship between the two.

Employing a quantitative research design, data were collected from a sample of 164 social enterprises in the UK and analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM).

The results illustrate that whilst the direct relationship between social and economic performance is inconclusive, social performance contributes indirectly to improve economic performance through improving social enterprise reputation.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first of this kind in the context of social enterprises which sheds light on the long-standing conflicting literature on the relationship between the dual objectives (i.e. social and economic) by providing reputation as the mediating variable.

The appraisal of corporate reputation based on third-party corporate social responsibility (CSR) indices appears to have been institutionalized. The endorsement of such an approach by sustainability custodians and influencers undermines the uptake of the morality and legitimacy of CSR. This study takes a social realist perspective, which suggests that social phenomena such as CSR and corporate reputation are shaped by social structures and power relations. This study aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between CSR and corporate reputation and understand ways in which the constructs are influenced by cognitive factors.

This study surveyed 411 respondents across five shopping malls and analyzed the data using path analysis of the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique. The mall-intercept survey sought to critically assess expectations of CSR vis-à-vis evaluation of corporate reputation. Based on a case study of three Johannesburg Stock Exchange listed companies, CSR expectations were measured along the philanthropic, economic, ethical and legal dimensions, while evaluation of corporate reputation was based on product quality, financial performance and social responsibility. SEM path analysis was used to extrapolate the predictive outcomes of CSR on corporate reputation.

Reputation for product quality and social responsibility is underpinned by the fulfillment of ethical CSR expectations, while philanthropic gestures enhance the evaluation of financial performance. Legal CSR significantly influences the reputation for social responsibility and product quality. Fulfillment of economic CSR expectations influences the reputation for product quality. However, no relationship was established between economic performance and social responsibility. Involvement in economic, philanthropic and particularly, legal CSR, are not indicative of the reputation for financial performance. Conversely, companies’ involvement in economic CSR does not suggest a higher propensity for social responsibility.

The predictive outcomes of CSR expectations on corporate reputation can reveal situated understanding of actual perceptions of corporate behavior.

Ethical business conduct is synonymously associated with social responsibility while espoused corporate philanthropy signals strong financial performance. The awareness of consumers’ cognitive evaluation of corporate reputation can offer a pathway to corporate communication professionals, policy makers and agencies to rethink and reposition CSR efforts.

Insensitivity to taken-for-granted cultural prescriptions and reliance on market-based reputational rankings undermine mutually beneficial stakeholder relationships and the social license to operate.

This study brings to the fore, cognitively dominated indicators of consumers’ perceptions of the reputation for CSR, to foster nuanced and halo-removed approaches to social responsibility. The authors show for the first time how companies’ skewed focus on corporate philanthropic giving paradoxically signals a capitalistic notion of social responsibility and unethical business conduct. This study offers a halo-removed orientation to the appraisal of CSR and corporate reputation.

The current, established scale used to measure personal reputation treats the construct as a unidimensional measure. For example, the scale fails to distinguish between individuals who are known for being socially popular versus those who are known for being experts in their field. This study aims to address this issue by developing a multidimensional personal reputation scale.

Based on existing theory, a scale is developed and validated against existing, similar constructs. First, a panel of three academic experts who have done research on personal reputation, and also two professional experts who have rich experience in the management field, evaluated the items for face validity. Then 112 working adults were asked to rate the reputation of a co-worker. Each dimension of personal reputation was validated against an existing, similar scale (e.g. social reputation was validated against an existing “popularity” scale).

A multi-dimensional, personal reputation scale is presented. This measure purports that personal reputation has three dimensions: task, social and integrity.

The presented scale allows researchers to distinguish different types of reputations in the workplace. This is significant because both anecdotal evidence and empirical findings suggest that to simply assume that reputation based upon being a person of high integrity and upon being an expert at a specific task will present the same outcomes is a fallacy. To further the knowledge of personal reputation, a need exists to be able to measure the different dimensions of reputation.

This paper aims to solve the problem of information overload and reduce search costs. It proposes a social e-commerce online reputation formation model and community state-introduced model. A system dynamics trend simulation has been run to capture the relationship among the sellers, buyers, social e-commerce platforms and external environment to obtain an online reputation.

Empirical research relating to social e-commerce reputation has been used to confirm the influencing factors in social e-commerce, and a conceptual framework is developed for social e-commerce reputation formation. Thereafter, a trend simulation is generated to classify the relationship among the factors based on system dynamics. Also, the improved algorithm for community detection and a state-introduced model based on a Markov network are proposed to achieve better network partition for better online reputation management.

The empirical model captures the interaction effect of social e-commerce reputation and the state-introduced model to guide community public opinion and improve the efficiency of social e-commerce reputation formation. This helps minimize searching cost thereby improving social e-commerce reputation construction and management.

There is no appropriate online reputation system to be constructed to test the relationship proposed in the study for a field experiment. Also, deeper investigation for the nodes’ attributes in social networks should be made in future research. Besides, researchers are advised to explore measurement for the reputation of a given seller by using social media data as from Twitter or micro blogs.

Investigations that study online reputation in the social e-commerce are limited. The empirical research figured out the factors which can influence the formation of online reputation in social e-commerce. An SD model was proposed to explain the factors interaction and trend simulation was run. Also, a state-introduced model was proposed to highlight the effect of nodes’ attributes on communities’ detection to give a deeper investigation for the online reputation management.

The purpose of this paper is to use stakeholder theory as the theoretical reference framework to study the influence of internationalization (geographic international diversification) and social performance on multinational companies’ (MNCs) reputation.

The authors confirm the research hypotheses using a sample of 113 US MNCs in the chemical, energy and industrial machinery sectors during the period 2005-2010.

This study contributes to the literature in three ways. First, it incorporates literature on internationalization to study the possible connection between geographic international diversification and social performance in MNCs. Second, it sheds light on the debate between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the reputation of MNCs in a very diverse transnational context in which MNCs must meet the needs of stakeholders at both local and global levels. Third, it incorporates the mediating role of social performance in the relationship between geographic international diversification and the firm’s reputation.

Prior studies have hardly analyzed this relationship, which becomes especially relevant for MNCs, since their implementation of advanced CSR practices in the different markets in which they operate will gain them a good reputation, not only in specific local contexts but also globally, benefitting the organization as a whole and enabling it to gain internal consistency (improvement in internal efficiency), transparency and legitimacy.