Reputation, Status, Legitimacy, and Celebrity: Research Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Over four decades of research on social approval assets highlight the benefits and liabilities of legitimacy, status, reputation, and celebrity for organizations and individual executives. While recent efforts aspire to provide clarity regarding the conceptual distinctions between the various types of social evaluations, there remain significant questions about the measurement, multilevel nature, interplay between, and practical implications of these constructs. Further, the audiences that bestow these social evaluations are becoming more diverse and difficult to manage. The complex relationship between these key audiences is compounded by the increasingly self-selected manner in which information is consumed in the internet age (i.e., social media or other internet media outlets). To address these challenges and move social evaluations research forward, this panel discussion aims to bring together prominent scholars to comment on the current state and future directions of the legitimacy, status, reputation, and celebrity research streams in light of today’s increasingly complex business environment.