Abstract
Conventional wisdom holds that instances of corporate social irresponsibility (CSiR) imperil corporate reputations. Yet, there is little theoretical or empirical evidence regarding how and to what extent reputations are harmed by CSiR. Drawing on the availability heuristics literature and attribution theory, this study examines how stakeholder perceptions of CSiR generate reputational effects. By exploring a unique dataset of 1,518 CSiR events, we explain how and why organizations with greater cognitive availability to assessors, i.e. celebrity firms – suffer especially significant reputation damage following CSiR. We elaborate on how cognitive availability influences assessor application of availability heuristics and how this process may be largely responsible for the influence of organizational celebrity as an interpretive frame.
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