Reputation Matters Research Articles

Digital war for talent: How profile reputations on company rating platforms drive job seekers' application intentions

Companies searching for talent face intense competition in labor markets, so they might attempt to use their reputations to attract qualified people. Today's job seekers can gather additional reputational cues from online profiles on rating platforms, as well as from general information. Therefore, companies might have multiple reputations. Their profile reputation reflects cues provided by rating platforms (e.g., numerical ratings); their corporate reputation refers to preexisting perceptions and general knowledge of the firm. To the extent that a company's profile reputation and corporate reputation exist in parallel, they likely interact to affect job seekers' application intentions. With preliminary insights gained from qualitative interviews and extensive pretests, the authors conduct an online experiment with 725 job seekers to determine how company profiles on employer review sites might exert signaling effects on job seekers' application intentions. In line with the theoretical predictions, a company's profile reputation affects application intentions, contingent on applicants' prior evaluation of the firm's corporate reputation. That is, the employer's profile reputation matters for attracting talent, but companies with a poor general corporate reputation also can benefit more from a good profile reputation. These nuanced insights in turn offer several implications for human resource management efforts.

Infertility as seen by the infertile couples from a collectivistic culture.

Infertility in collectivistic cultures is usually regarded as a matter of social stigmatization instead of a biomedical problem. It has adverse sociocultural consequences, especially for the female spouse. The current study, by involving 20 infertile couples, was a qualitative research focusing on the sociocultural experiences of the infertile couples about the nature, causes, and consequences of infertility. The findings of the current study clearly depicted the sociocultural factors involved in interpreting infertility as a matter of shame and bad reputation for the couple and its family. The study has filled a significant knowledge gap and will be useful in identifying and addressing the cultural barriers in the treatment of infertility.

Does organizational reputation matter in Pakistan’s higher education institutions? The mediating role of person-organization fit and person-vocation fit between organizational reputation and turnover intention

Drawing on social identity theory (SIT), signaling theory, and attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) model, we proposed and developed a model linking organizational reputation to turnover intention, both directly and indirectly through person-vocation fit (P-V fit) and person-organization fit (P-O fit). The model was tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) on a sample of 250 full-time faculty members from Pakistan’s higher educational institutions. The findings supported the model and found that organization reputation had a negative and direct influence on turnover intention and positive impact on P-V fit and P-O fit. P-O fit and P-V fit, in turn, had negative relationships with faculty turnover intention. Moreover, the study revealed that P-O fit and P-V fit partially mediated the negative relationship between organizational reputation and faculty turnover intention. The findings of the study has important practical implications for the adoption of marketing concepts in non-profit seeking organizations, especially in higher educational institutions. The practical and theoretical implications and some interesting avenues for future research are discussed at the end of the study.

The performance of UK stock recommendation revisions: Does brokerage house reputation matter?

AbstractOur study examines the impact of brokerage house (BH) reputation on the performance of investment strategies following stock recommendation revisions in the UK stock market. We develop two alternative proxies for BH reputation based either on the past positions on the annual Institutional Investor (II) All‐Europe Research Team or on the past recommendation performance of BHs. We find that BH reputation proxied by the past II rankings has no significant impact on the recommendation performance, suggesting that the II rankings are largely “popularity contests”. However, BH reputation proxied by the past year recommendation performance of BHs has a significantly positive impact on the recommendation performance in the next year, implying that the recommendation performance of BHs in the UK market is persistent. The bootstrap simulations further confirm that the observed performance persistence could be due to BH skill rather than BH luck (i.e., random chance).

Does reputation matter for firm risk in developing country?

AbstractThis research examines the effect of corporate reputation for firm risk in a developing country for a sample of 256 Indonesia firms for the period 2011–2015. Using two‐step generalized method of moments approach, this research documents five important findings: (a) firm with higher reputation exhibits lower total risk (stock return volatility) and lower tail risk, yet, no significant effect on default risk; (b) Firms with high leverage use reputation effect for less total risk, tail risk, and default risk; (c) Firms with low leverage only enjoy the reputation effect on less total risk, but no reputation effect on tail risk and default risk; (d) Firms with high profitability utilize reputation to reduce the tail risk and default risk; and (f) firm with low profitability has less tail risk when their reputation is high. This evidence contributes to the literature by uncovering important and previously unidentified determinants of risk, namely, reputation. It offers an insight to stakeholders that reputation does matter.

Compensation consultants: Does reputation matter?

In this paper, we analyze the role of hiring a reputable compensation consultant for firms wanting to secure affirmative Say on Pay (SoP) votes. We provide evidence that reputation influences shareholders voting behavior positively when CEO pay is excessive and when peer CEOs are paid less. We employ two methods to account for endogeneity, instrumental variables as well as examining firms switching up to more reputable compensation consultants. Our results are robust with respect to CEO pay and complexity as well as fees and alternate measures of reputation. Firms concerned with the negative feedback associated with negative SoP votes should factor reputation in their decision to hire consultants, especially if trying to adopt compensation packages that may appear excessive.

Does corporate reputation matter in the relationship between organizational cultural intelligence and customer loyalty among SMEs in Nigeria?

The declined customer loyalty and low competitive spirit confronting Nigerian owned SMEs when compared to their foreign counterparts operating under the same business environment have been an issue of concern for scholars and practitioners. The main thrust of this study is to evaluate the role of organizational cultural intelligence and corporate reputation on customer loyalty. A survey questionnaire was retrieved from 250 businesses owned by Nigerian (other than the natives of the place of operation) and Non-Nigerians operating in Plateau State Nigeria, and from 335 customers of these businesses as well. The data collected was analyzed using Smart-PLS 3.2.7 Software to determine the direct relationship between Organisational Cultural Intelligence and Customer loyalty and the indirect relationship through the intervening role of corporate reputation. The results revealed the relationship between organizational cultural intelligence and customer loyalty as positive but insignificant. While corporate reputation mediates the relationship between organizational cultural intelligence and customer loyalty. We further discussed the theoretical and practical implications as well as a recommendation for future studies. We inferred that Organisational CQ and Corporate reputations are important predictors and mechanisms to understanding customer loyalty among SMEs in Nigeria.

Honor Revenges in Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron

Honor Revenges in Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron Cynthia Skenazi From achilles' wrath at Agamemnon in the opening of the Iliad on, honor has been an essential component of the social life of Western elites. As with any form of conduct or code, this concept cannot be isolated from its historical and cultural context. Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron provides a lens to learn different views on this key notion from a fraction of members of the French court.1 As critics have noted, the novellas, along with the discussions they generate among the ten narrators, offer a series of case studies in which the readers are invited to rethink the "gendered virtues of masculine combativeness and female chastity, silence, and obedience."2 Little attention, however, has been given to the importance of honor in the Heptaméron's representations of masculinity and femininity. This article focuses on stories about male and female honor revenges in the upper ranks. It argues that honor became a more flexible concept in sixteenth-century France, which served as a basis for new modes of self-evaluation and social interactions for both genders. The question "what is honor?" elicits a wide range of answers depending on multiple parameters such as a person's gender and age, profession and social position, the location and circumstances under consideration, and so on. In Marguerite's time more specifically, this notion was part of a network of related concepts as evidenced by its definition in Randle Cotgrave's Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (1611): "Honneur: renowne; reputation, credit, praise, glorie, fame, great account, high reckoning, much estimation; worship, reverence; dignitie, promotion."3 Defining each of these terms is no easy task for their meanings overlap and shift. One central aspect, however, has remained unchanged throughout the long history of honor in the Western world: the utterly public nature of this notion. An individual's feeling of his worth is of no use unless his qualities are publicly approved by people whose opinion one takes into account. In Latin, honor meant the publicly acknowledged superiority of those of high status or moral excellence. For twentieth-century anthropologist Julian Pitt-Rivers, who conducted research on Mediterranean societies in which honor was still an essential social concept, honor is "the value of a person in his own eyes, but also in the eyes of his society. It is his estimation of his own worth, his claim to pride, but it is also the acknowledgment of that claim, his excellence recognized by society, [End Page 75] his right to pride."4 In Marguerite's France, honor as a matter of outward reputation played a special role in the social existence and self-fashioning of male and female members of the elite. By elite, I mean the more privileged members of society exercising the greatest authority or enjoying the highest standing. The majority of them belonged to the aristocracy, and those who did not were nevertheless treated with a comparable deference. Despite differences in culture, power, wealth, and status, elite members were able to recognize one another if not as equals, at least as members of a particular community united by ideals of conduct and values which, in their different regional variations, bore a certain resemblance to one another. Under the umbrella of honor, French gentlemen of Marguerite's time were concerned with various facets of their private and public life such as their family's reputation, the attainment of office and associated influence, the performance of military duty—all of which denoted both gentle status and the possession of full, mature masculinity. Among the recurring 'ingredients' were birth and lineage, prowess on the battlefield, a particular lifestyle, virtue, learning and education, piety and godliness, loyalty, truthfulness, and keeping one's promises. Sexual purity, chastity, and modesty were female honor's primary constituents. Changes in the ranking of these components corresponded to parallel changes in members of the elite's values; yet without honor, social existence became virtually impossible. Although the importance of this notion was taken for granted, its interpretation was an object of discussions, tensions, and ambivalences among upper rank members. Male honor revenges The Heptam...

Reputation matters: parasocial attachment, narrative engagement, and the 2018 Taylor Swift political endorsement

ABSTRACT This study examined the processing of a celebrity political social media post in terms of parasocial attachment and narrative engagement. Taylor Swift’s 2018 election endorsement Instagram post was examined in the final weeks before Election Day. Participants were measured for level of parasocial attachment, level of narrative engagement, and subsequent intentions for the 2018 election. Findings suggest that narrative involvement, above and beyond mere parasocial attachment, aid in the processing of messages and influence behavior change. Implications are discussed.

Public policies for household recycling when reputation matters

An important strand in the economic literature focuses on how to provide the right incentives for households to recycle their waste. A growing number of studies, inspired by psychology, seek to explain waste sorting and pro-environmental behavior, and highlight the importance of social approval and the peer effect. The present theoretical work explores these issues. We propose a model that considers heterogeneous households that choose to recycle, based on three main household characteristics: their environmental preferences, the opportunity costs of their tax expenditures, and their reputations. The model is original in depicting the interactions among households, which enable them to form beliefs about social recycling norms, allowing them to assess their reputation. These interactions are explored through Agent-based simulations. We highlight how individual recycling decisions depend on these interactions and how the effectiveness of public policies related to recycling are affected by a crowding-out effect. The model simulations consider three complementary policies: provision of incentives to recycle through taxation; provision of information on the importance of selective sorting; and an ‘individualized’ approach that takes the form of a ‘nudge’ using social comparison. Interestingly, the results regarding these policies emerging from households interactions at the aggregate level cannot be fully predicted from “isolated” individual recycling decisions.

Behind the Aid Brand: Distinguishing between Development Finance and Assistance

International aid is often analysed as if it was a homogeneous product exclusively distributed between a relatively small numbers of public agencies. In contrast, this paper contributes to thinking about aid as a quasi-market with many different suppliers, users, channels, products and brands. More specifically, it suggests drawing a stronger distinction between development finance and development assistance. A simple graph shows how this entails distinguishing between social impact and financial sustainability. Given that these characteristics are often far from transparent, the paper also illustrates the limitations of a rational choice approach to analysing aid. The difficulties entailed in assessing aid impact and sustainability help to explain why brand reputations matter. The argument is illustrated with references to UK aid, aid to Ethiopia, and NGO promotion of smallholder linkages into agricultural value chains in Africa.

Does reputation matter? Evidence from share repurchases

This paper examines whether the stock market considers the firm's reputation established through a history of management earnings forecasting when it evaluates open market repurchase announcements. We refer to this established reputation as the firm's “forecast reputation”. We find that while the stock market considers the firm's “repurchase reputation” (proxied by prior repurchase completion rates), it also considers the firm's forecast reputation established from the accuracy of prior management earnings forecasting, suggesting a spillover effect of forecast reputation. Further, interaction test between the two reputation variables reveals that the market reacts more to the firm's forecast reputation when its repurchase reputation is low. Additional analyses suggest that when a firm announces a share repurchase program for the first time (i.e., when there is no repurchase reputation), investors turn to the forecast reputation within the firm as an alternative source of reputation, on which the credibility of repurchase announcements is assessed. Overall, our study provides evidence that firms establish a reputation in the market through multiple sources of announcements.

Does university reputation matter? Evidence from peer-to-peer lending

Using the sample of listings from one of the famous peer-to-peer lending platforms in China, Renrendai.com, we investigate the role of university reputation in peer-to-peer lending. The empirical results show that it is easier for borrowers who graduated from prestigious universities to obtain the requested loans and to have a higher fraction of listing funded. Borrowers who graduated from top ranking universities usually have a lower possibility of loan default and a lower ratio of loan default. Overall, our findings suggest that the university reputation matters in peer-to-peer lending as it can predict lenders’ and borrowers’ behaviors.

International reputation and alliance portfolios: How unreliability affects the structure and composition of alliance treaties

Why do states ever form military alliances with unreliable partners? States sign offensive and defensive military alliances to increase their fighting capabilities in the event of war and as a signal to deter potential aggressors from initiating a crisis. Yet, signing an alliance with an unreliable partner is at odds with both of these rationales. This should be particularly concerning for peace scholars and policymakers, since the uncertainty generated by unreliable partners may increase system-wide conflict. This article provides an answer to this puzzle by arguing that states continue to form alliances with unreliable partners because they can adopt rational portfolio-diversification strategies. Drawing on well-developed models from portfolio theory, we present evidence that states design their overall alliance portfolios to minimize the risks posed by allies with a reputation for being unreliable. Specifically, we show that unreliable allies are more likely to be pooled into multilateral alliances that dilute risk rather than bilateral alliances, and that states allied with unreliable partners form a greater number of alliances to hedge against the added risk of default. Together, our results demonstrate why unreliable partners may not lead to increased conflict initiation, while also providing a novel explanation for previously unexplained variation in the structure of alliance portfolios. The article contributes to the literatures on international reputation and the rational design of international institutions by demonstrating how international reputation matters in subtle and often overlooked ways.

Reputation and the Accountability Gap

In her recent article on the reputation of international organizations (IOs), Kristina Daugirdas concludes that reputation's constraining effect has some serious shortcomings in the context of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA). This essay extends those conclusions to recent mass torts cases against IOs. In particular, it argues that member states and IOs have independent and overlapping concerns that have contributed to devaluing the relevance of a “good reputation,” particularly when it comes to providing compensation for wrongful conduct. IOs, it seems, do not want to develop a reputation for deep pockets. Nonetheless, this essay also demonstrates that when compensation is not at issue, there are instances in which reputation matters to IOs. It concludes by discussing recent cases related to responsibility and organizational immunities and suggests that the trend of narrowing immunities may change the reputational calculus for IOs and member states significantly.

Are corporate social responsibility and advertising complements or substitutes in producing firm reputation?

ABSTRACTA firm’s reputation is one of the critical drivers of success, and two of the key levers firms use to influence their perceived reputation are corporate social responsibility (CSR) and advertising. The relationship between CSR and advertising is important because whether they are complements or substitutes has different implications for how firms use these activities. Using a unique panel dataset of US-listed companies between 2005 and 2014, we estimate flexible production functions to identify whether CSR and advertising act as complements or substitutes in the production of firm reputation. A secondary motivation of this paper is to examine whether the use of different stakeholder ratings of firm reputation matters. We find evidence consistent with advertising and CSR being substitutes toward the production of firm reputation. Our results also show that advertising, own-firm CSR activities, and industry-level CSR spillovers contribute positively to firm reputation. Lastly, we find that the effects of CSR and advertising vary across the stakeholder groups (general public, business executives, or CSR experts) used in the analysis.

Does reputation matter in the dividend smoothing policy of emerging market firms? Empirical evidence from India

Integrating reputational considerations in the analysis of dividend smoothing, we study the dividend smoothing determinants. We examine the extent to which the asymmetric information and agency costs theories explain dividend smoothing and whether their proxies' impact varies given the firm's reputation as a high- or low-smoothing firm. Our quantile regression results confirm that the determinants vary significantly across smoothing quantiles. In the low-smoothing quantiles, capturing firms with a lower tendency towards smoothing and hence facing lesser or no reputational concerns, the degree of dividend smoothing increases significantly with size, age, and tangibility, whereas it declines with ownership concentration and risk. Interestingly, most of these factors turn insignificant for firms in the high-smoothing quantiles, facing higher reputational stakes. Emphasizing the predominance of reputational effects on the determination of dividend smoothing, these findings help explain the dividend smoothing puzzle: why firms with lesser or no need for dividend smoothing still smooth high.

Public Procurement and Reputation: An Agent-Based Model

Based on the literature on public procurement regulation, we use an Agent-Based Model to assess the performance of different selection procedures. Specifically, we aim at investigating whether and how the inclusion of reputation of firms in the public procurement selection process affects the final cost of the contract. The model defines two types of actors: i) firms potentially competing to win the contract; ii) a contracting authority, aiming at minimizing procurement costs. These actors respond to environmental conditions affecting the actual costs of carrying on the project and which are unknown to firms and to the contracting authority at the time of bidding. The results from the model are generated through simulations by considering different configurations and varying some parameters of the model, such as the firms’ skills,the level of opportunistic rebate, the relative weight of reputation and rebate. The main conclusion is that reputation matters and some policy implications are drawn.

Reckoning with the Silences of #MeToo

Feminist Studies 44, no. 1. © 2018 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 197 Ashwini Tambe Reckoning with the Silences of #MeToo The past six months have been an important time for US feminism. For women’s studies professors, it’s been heartening to find the world outside our classrooms taking up conversations about sex and power that we’ve been having for decades. In this piece, I will reflect on three questions: What is going on? Why is it happening now? And what forms of feminism have been overlooked in the coverage of the #MeToo movement ? I spend the longest time on the third question, because I’m concerned about how #MeToo has advanced a version of public feminism that is, in some ways, out of step with currents in academic feminism. What’s going on? Although feminists have long championed public speak-outs for survivors of sexual violence—whether in Take Back the Night open mics since the 1980s or the workshops also called “MeToo” that Tarana Burke started in Alabama in 2007—the viral force of the hashtag #MeToo in mid-October 2017 took most people by surprise. Within the first twenty-four hours, it had been retweeted half a million times. According to Facebook, nearly 50 percent of US users are friends with someone who posted a message about experiences of assault or harassment. #MeToo was by no means just a US phenomenon: Facebook and Twitter feeds in various parts of the world, notably Sweden, India, and Japan, were rocked for days by this hashtag. Then came the slew of powerful cis-men, largely in the US 198 News and Views media and entertainment industries, who were forced to swiftly resign after allegations of sexual misconduct. This toppling continues and has expanded beyond the media to other industries where reputations matter: politics, music, architecture, and, somewhat belatedly, higher education. In an important way, the ground beneath us has shifted. #MeToo has tilted public sympathy in favor of survivors by changing the default response to belief, rather than suspicion; the hashtag has revealed how widespread sexual coercion is. Why Now? We need to theorize, on a cultural scale, why this movement against sexual harassment and violence in the United States has happened now rather than, say, three years ago, when Bill Cosby was accused by multiple women, or after Roger Ailes, CEO of Fox News, was deposed. #MeToo’s impact may seem sudden, but it is a part of a groundswell in women’s activism since the November 2016 elections. The Women’s March was the largest globally coordinated public gathering in history. The 3-million strong Facebook group Pantsuit Nation saw hundreds of thousands of posts about experiences of misogyny. Unprecedented numbers of women are running for US political office this year. The signature affective note running through this political moment is a fierce rage about the election of Donald Trump. Trump’s impunity, I suggest, serves as a trigger provoking the fury at the heart of #MeToo. There are many reasons to find fault with Trump, but it is distinctly galling that he faced no consequences after acknowledging being a sexual predator. For victims of sexual trauma, it is already painful to watch perpetrators roam free because of how high the burdens of proof are in legal cases. When a person such as Trump is grandly affirmed by an election, it retraumatizes victims. Right after the election , therapists and counseling centers were flooded with patients seeking help with processing past events. The ballast provided by women’s feverish organizing and the instant power of social media has facilitated a collective emboldening. Trump has made the comeuppance of all powerful men feel more urgent. But from the inception of #MeToo, I have also watched its racial and class politics with some wariness: whose pain was being centered, I wondered? A colleague recently asked aloud: is #MeToo a white women’s movement? Another wondered, is this a moral panic? These questions News and Views 199 underline the importance of feminist insights that are overlooked in dominant coverage of the movement. What’s Left Out? Critical race feminism offers important insights when exploring the question of whether this is a white...

Does Information Asymmetry Affect Corporate Tax Aggressiveness?

We investigate the effect of information asymmetry on corporate tax avoidance. Using a difference-in-differences matching estimator to assess the effects of changes in analyst coverage caused by broker closures and mergers, we find that firms avoid tax more aggressively after a reduction in analyst coverage. We further find that this effect is mainly driven by firms with higher existing tax-planning capacity (e.g., tax-haven presence), smaller initial analyst coverage, and a smaller number of peer firms. Moreover, the effect is more pronounced in industries where reputation matters more and in firms subject to less monitoring from tax authorities.