The Reputational Landscape

Abstract

Welcome to the inaugural double issue of the Corporate Reputation Review. At a time when disciplines are fragmenting into ever-more specialized domains, we are pleased to announce the creation of an integrative medium for research and practice about reputation management. Indeed, the primary purpose of the Review is to provide a forum for research-based discussions about corporate reputations. We expect these conversations to reflect the diversity of academic disciplines that are actively contributing to knowledge in this area, whether grounded in strategic management, organization theory, economics, marketing, communications, accounting, or finance. As such, the Review will assemble emerging scholarship about an area that is proving to be of considerable interest to scholars with widely divergent orientations. In this way, we hope to encourage a closer examination of corporate reputations and thereby stimulate the growth of knowledge about the complex socially constructed environments in which companies operate. We also intend the Corporate Reputation Review to address the proliferating demands by practitioners for answers to questions about how reputations affect competitive positioning, about how to examine and value corporate reputations, about how to build, maintain, and defend those reputations (Hall, 1992). Many professionals have a vested interest in developing answers to these questions, be they chief executive officers or strategic planners, brand managers or identity specialists, accountants or financiers, heads of public relations, community relations, investor relations, customer relations, or employee relations. In their everyday life, each is deeply involved in managing a company’s reputational assets. Yet all too few can identify and provide well-reasoned and defensible answers to questions about corporate reputation and reputational dynamics. A key purpose of the Corporate Reputation Review, then, is to help remedy that lack. Through conceptual articles, empirical research, case studies of best practice, and occasional book reviews, we hope to draw on the expertise of leading researchers and practitioners concerned with corporate identity and identification, the strategic management of stakeholders, corporate branding, the valuation of intangibles, communication, crisis management, and the socioeconomic analysis of competition.