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This study aims to investigate whether social reputation via corporate social responsibility (CSR) awarding facilitates access to debt and decreases the cost of debt and whether governance mechanisms moderate this relationship.

The sample covers the period between 2002 and 2021, during which CSR award data were available in the Thomson Reuters Eikon/Refinitiv database. The empirical models are based on country, industry and year fixed-effects regression.

While the main findings produced an insignificant result for access to debt, they indicated strong evidence for the positive relationship between CSR awarding and the cost of debt. Moreover, the moderating effect highlights that while the sustainability committee helps CSR-awarded companies access debt more easily, independent directors help firms decrease the cost of debt via CSR awarding. Furthermore, the results differ between the US and the non-US samples, earlier and recent periods, high- and low-leverage firms and large and small firms.

For the first time, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the authors assess whether social reputation via CSR awarding facilitates access to debt and decreases the cost of debt in an international and cross-industry sample. Little is known about the effect of social reputation on loan contracting, although social reputation conveys broader information that goes beyond the firm’s internal (performance) and external (reporting) CSR practices. The authors also draw attention to the differing roles of distinct governance mechanisms in leveraging social reputation for loan contracting.

This study aims to investigate the influence of the reviewed establishment’s price level and the user’s social network size and reputation status on consumers’ tendency to post more visual imagery content. Furthermore, it explores the moderating effects of user experiences and geographic distance on these dynamics.

This study adopts a multi-method approach to explore both the determinants behind the sharing of user-generated photos in online reviews and their internal mechanisms. Using a comprehensive secondary data set from Yelp.com, the authors focused on restaurant reviews from a prominent tourist destination to construct econometric models incorporating time-fixed effects. To enhance the robustness of the authors’ findings, the authors complemented the big data analysis with a series of controlled experiments.

The reviewed establishments price level and the users reputation status and social network size incite corresponding motivations conspicuous display “reputation seeking” and social approval motivating users to incorporate more images in reviews. “User experiences can amplify the influence of these factors on image sharing.” An increase in the users geographical distance lessens the impact of the price level on image sharing, but it heightens the influence of the users reputation and social network size on the number of shared images.

As a result of this study, high-end establishments can increase their online visibility by leveraging user-generated visual content. A structured rewards program could significantly boost engagement by incentivizing photo sharing, particularly among users with elite status and extensive social networks. Additionally, online review platforms can enhance users’ experiences and foster more dynamic interactions by developing personalized features that encourage visual content production.

This research, anchored in trait activation theory, offers an innovative examination of the determinants of photo-posting behavior in online reviews by enriching the understanding of how the intricate interplay between users’ characteristics and situational cues can shape online review practices.

This study aims to investigate how employee perspectives on the role of business, specifically capitalist beliefs, affect the corporate social responsibility (CSR)–reputation–employee behavior relationship.

A conceptual model was developed, and to test the model empirically, survey data were collected over two phases from 192 working professionals. Data were analyzed in SAS using Hayes’s PROCESS approach.

Results of this study reveal that the positive employee outcomes (i.e. affective commitment and reduced turnover intentions), resulting from CSR, through perceived employer reputation (i.e. an employee’s perception of how others view their firm), are diminished when employees have strong capitalist beliefs.

Building on the signaling and person–organization fit literatures, this study highlights the theoretical and managerial importance of recognizing employees’ ideological differences as well as the value of considering employee perceptions of reputation. Although many stakeholders value social responsibility, not all do, and a firm’s intended outcomes will vary depending on employees’ beliefs.

This study demonstrates that CSR not only affects institutional-level corporate reputation, as previously studied, but also affects employees’ behaviors through “perceived employer reputation”, or employee beliefs about how other stakeholders perceive the firm. Moreover, this study highlights the importance of understanding employee differences, including ideological differences, prior to engaging in certain types of CSR.

The gap that this research attempts to fill is to analyse the explanatory factor “industry” when assessing the reputation of a corporate group. In other words, this research attempts to demonstrate the impact of the “industrial halo” on the assessment of corporate reputation, given that, to date, the academic literature has not considered industry as an explanatory variable in the assessment of the reputation of private companies.

A sample of 43 Spanish companies was used to analyse the relationship between the reputation of firms as measured by the Merco Empresas index, and the industries to which they belong, after controlling for company performance, size, turnover, public recognition of their leadership, and corporate responsibility. This involved conducting a cross-sectional analysis of the relationship between the variables for each year in the time period from 2005 to 2016. The available data were taken from the firms' annual financial reports and websites, as well as from the Merco.

The paper shows the existence of industrial halos that account for the corporate reputation of businesses in Spain. It is also shown that industrial halos are not permanent over time, and that they tend to occur in years of crisis.

It would have been desirable for this study to have had sufficient data to include other industries, but this was not possible. As for possible extensions, in addition to expanding the period considered, other analytical techniques, such as panel data models, could be applied to allow comparison with the results obtained here.

The results of this study have some practical implications. Firstly, firms that publish corporate reputation rankings should be aware of the distortion that the industrial halo can produce, especially in times of uncertainty, and seek to correct for it in their measurements. And secondly, corporate groups themselves should assume that the reputation of the industry affects their individual reputation, and consequently, they should see the other companies in the industry not only as competitors but also as “reputational allies”. They should therefore make collective efforts to improve in this respect, especially in the face of reputational crises.

This paper provides a better understanding of the relationship between the reputation of a company and the industry to which it belongs, and of its permanence over time. This relationship has been little studied in the Spanish market to date.

本研究擬分析當企業集團的信譽被評估時的解釋性因素-行業,以填補現時的研究缺口。具體來說,研究人員鑒於學術文獻至今仍未於評估私營企業的信譽時、把行業當作是一個解釋變量來看待,故擬進行研究、以顯示行業光環在評估企業信譽時所產生的影響。

研究使用的樣本為43間西班牙公司。研究人員分析以Merco Empresas 指數來測量的公司信譽與公司所屬行業之間的關係。有關的分析調控了公司的業績、規模、營業額、企業責任、以及企業領導能力的公眾認可程度所帶來的影響。研究人員對有關變量間的關係進行橫向分析 分析於2005年至2016年期間年度性地進行。現有數據取自有關公司的年度財務報表和其網站,也有取自Merco的。

研究結果表明了可解釋西班牙企業信譽的行業光環是存在的。研究結果亦顯示、行業光環不是永恆的,而且,行業光環往往會在營運極其困難的年度內出現。

本文讓我們更深入瞭解公司信譽與公司所屬行業之間的關係,以及其在時間上的永恆性。就這相關的關係而言,探討西班牙市場的研究至今為數不多。

This paper aims to determine the demand category and level of government and investors in public–private partnership (PPP) projects. It emphasizes the importance of meeting the demands of stakeholders and controlling the unreasonable demands. This study aims to improve the demand management of stakeholders in the PPP project and lay a foundation for the research on behavior based on the motivation theory.

This paper opted for a questionnaire survey to collect data based on indicators identified through literature. The participants come from the government and private sector (investors, contractors, operators, etc.) in China PPP Lecture Hall. The reliability, validity and variance analyses are used to test the reliability of data. Factor analysis and entropy method are used to determine demand categories and weights.

The government’s 14 demands are divided into four groups: satisfy public activities, self-interest, responsibility and relief financial pressure; 6 investor's demands are divided into development ability and satisfy social activities. The self-interest of government is higher than that of the publicity in PPP projects; investor's social reputation is most important, it is a foundation for obtaining external resources and achieving enterprise development.

Because of the chosen research approach, the demand indexes cannot be exhausted. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to enrich relevant contents further.

This paper includes implications for a targeted demand control mechanism and for managing the unreasonable demand.

This paper comprehensively identifies the demand hierarchy of the government and investors, and provides the theoretical basis for the target management of stakeholders.

The modern corporation is evaluated by many measures that go beyond profit, which was the emphasis for years previously. Today’s corporation is weighed against expectations of many stakeholders, including not just customers but employees, investors, the government and even the public at large with no discernible financial or other tie to a company. As such, corporate boards necessarily must be concerned with more than financial performance, including corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the increasing emphasis on environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics. Given that public relations scholars and practitioners have long been concerned with stakeholder relationships, social responsibility and other non-financial indicators, it would make sense that public relations has a more obvious presence on corporate boards.

This study examined the 25 companies in the Fortune Modern Board 25 to determine how many board members had a background or expertise in public relations that would contribute to the leadership necessary for the concerns of the modern corporation, and whether the boards had a committee designated to public relations or related functions.

Results show that there are few corporate boards that have public relations represented prominently in either their members or committees. The same is true for executive leadership teams. Public relations or communications executives do appear to play some role in ESG, CSR and DEI reporting, but often there are staff members with those specific titles and roles.

The study was limited to 25 corporations on a Forbes list that ranked them as best in communicating ESG, CSR and DEI. The method examined publicly available literature which was revealing to the research questions, but more could be learned by interview or survey with CCOs.

The study shows the current presence of public relations capacity in terms of members of corporate boards, corporate committees and among the C-suite is not significant. Also, rather than PR as a function owning modern concerns of DEI, ESG and CSR, there are professionals with specific expertise in those areas who are responsible for those corporate issues.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR), ESG (environmental, social, governance) and DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) have recently been stressed as important for corporations to measure and report. The role of the public relations profession in managing and/or communicating in these areas is important to consider in terms of public expectations and satisfaction of communication on these subjects.

This paper is unique in integrating public relations theory and practice with board theory and the current management concerns with ESG, CSR and DEI. Little if any previous research has considered which professions are in charge of communicating on these concerns.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is viewed as a differentiating strategy that wins over stakeholders’ confidence. Due to the potential strategic and positive effects on businesses, the study of CSR and its relationship to competitiveness has gained relevance. While studies have examined the impact of CSR activities on firm competitiveness, the findings so far remain contradictory. Further research on the underlying processes/mechanisms that explain how CSR contributes to competitiveness remains scarce. Accordingly, this study aims to look into the link between CSR and competitiveness with a focus on Asian business and management studies.

By using a bibliometric approach, this paper aims to provide a review of the state-of-the-art research on the linkage between CSR and competitiveness in Asian context. The sample for this research included all 538 studies from the period of 2001–2023 in the Scopus database. A bibliometric study included both co-occurrence and co-citation analysis.

The study’s findings made significant contributions by identifying seven distinct clusters of co-occurrences. Using co-citation, three journals-based co-citation clusters and another three authors-based co-citation clusters are identified. The findings show how processes/mechanisms such as – accountability, multi-stakeholder dialogue/engagement, resource generation, emphasizing sustainable development goals and emerging markets, redefining strategy, cultivating value/vision and CSR leadership – are increasing in importance.

Overall, the authors argue that CSR-led competitiveness is indeed one of the key drivers for improved sustainability performance of a firm.

Based on findings, a conceptual framework has been proposed highlighting different processes and mechanisms that influence the CSR-led competitiveness – outcomes relationship.

This study aims to determine whether socially friendly business strategy impacts social sustainability performance and, if so, whether social management process and spiritual capital act as mediators and moderators of the relationship.

This study uses a comprehensive research framework consisting of the mediation and moderation relationship among four constructs, namely, socially friendly business strategy, social management process, spiritual capital and social sustainability performance. A total of 433 owners/managers of micro, small and medium-sized firms (MSMEs) in the Indonesian province of East Java took part in this study, and the data were gathered using a survey method. The resource-based view, stakeholder theory and partial least squares structural equation modelling are all used in this study to evaluate and explain the hypotheses.

The results show that both socially friendly business strategy and social management process positively affect social sustainability performance. Further analysis reveals that spiritual capital moderates the effect of socially friendly business strategy on social sustainability performance. Second, social management process mediates the influence of socially friendly business strategy on social sustainability performance in part.

The current study has limitations. First, it restricts the scope of its sample to MSMEs in Indonesia’s East Java Province. As a result, it also restricts its generalizability, and care must be used if the findings are applied to other types of organizations and geographic areas. Second, some survey participants needed help to complete the online questionnaire. As a result, collecting the data were less successful than anticipated. This study has significant implications for the development of the stakeholder theory, particularly in elucidating the mechanisms by which socially responsible corporate strategies, social management practices and performance in terms of social sustainability are affected.

The findings provide a comprehensive guidance for owners/managers in reorienting their business strategy, managing the social management process and building their spiritual capital to achieve social sustainability performance. It provides materials for researchers and students who are interested in studying the subject matter.

MSMEs have a significant role in society. The welfare of society will therefore increase if social sustainability performance is successful. The overall model of social sustainability performance improvements and its antecedents are presented in this study.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first attempts to explore the general model of improving social sustainability performance using four constructs that are rarely used in previous studies. It also uses a new data set and research setting in Indonesia as one of the emerging countries.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the practices that owners of public profiles in social networking sites can leverage to actively build online reputation and to evaluate the impact of the adoption of such practices on the initial formation of trust toward these individuals when they are presented as new virtual work partners.

A theoretical model was developed and an experiment with 233 participants was utilized to assess the model using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The results suggest that individuals can build their online reputations in public profiles of social networking sites via a series of practices of self-disclosure of information and that the adoption of these practices has significant effects on the initial formation of trust toward the profile owner in virtual work contexts. Categorization mechanisms such as stereotyping, unit grouping and reputation categorization have been found to contribute to the initial formation of trust, both from an affect and cognition-based perspectives.

Little is known about the information disclosure practices in public profiles of social networking sites that new work partners can adopt to facilitate the formation of trust between them before they start working together. This study has contributed to the existing body of literature by clarifying these practices and the relative importance of online reputation to the initial formation of trust during the outset of a new virtual work relationship.

Once a corporate crisis is entangled with a social issue, how consumers make sense of the crisis can be impacted by issue-based opinion polarization. This study investigates the underlying mechanisms as consumers go through this process. This study also examines whether corporate social advocacy (CSA) can be an effective crisis-response strategy for mitigating reputational loss.

Theoretical inquiries were empirically tested using an online experiment (N = 792). The experiment set the context in China, in a working-overtime-issue-related crisis. It had a 2 (online exposure: anti-issue opinion vs. pro-issue opinion) × 2 (CSA: absence vs. presence) between-subject design with a continuous variable (pre-existing issue attitudes) measured before the manipulation.

This study found that pre-existing issue attitudes can be directly and indirectly associated with corporate reputation, for the issue attitudes influence how consumers attribute crisis blame. Such a direct effect of pre-existing issue attitudes varies depending on which polarized opinion consumers were exposed to on social media. This study also found CSA to be a robust crisis response strategy, through multiple mechanisms, in protecting the corporate reputation.

Scholars are scarcely aware of the threats that issue-based opinion polarization poses to corporate reputation. This study serves as an early attempt to provide theoretical explanations. In addition to this, this study extends the current conceptual understandings of CSA during corporate crises that involve social issues while adding fresh insights into the established typology of crisis-response strategies.