Reputational Capital Research Articles

The reputation capital of an individual in business environment and its impact on company’s reputation

In the modern world, the desire to be well perceived by the environment has become a duty, which is the only way to achieve a competitive advantage and success. Today, the reputation capital of an individual is of great importance, especially on the labor market. Everyone wants to be an important part of the team. To have respect and love in the workplace, it is necessary to develop and increase your reputation capital. In this article, the authors consider in detail the concept of «reputation», including the approaches of domestic and foreign authors, study the concept of «business reputation», its main characteristics, elements and advantages. The paper studies the ways to increase the reputation capital of an individual in business environment, as well as mistakes that should be avoided. It notes the actions that should be taken if someone wants to blacken business reputation for their own benefit. This article highlights and describes the impact of a person's reputation capital on the reputation of an enterprise based on the results of a Weber Shandwick survey, and also examines the company's impact on the reputation of employees: investigates key criteria of a future employer for most applicants, analyzes certain methods and tools for retaining valuable employees in the workplace in the long term. The article concludes with is formulating the concept of «reputation» as a social opinion, justified or not, about a certain object. A good reputation is synonymous with prestige, fame and a good name; a bad reputation is equated with dishonor or discredit.

Managing Talent to Build Reputational Capital: An Investigation of Jordanian Telecommunications Companies

Managing Talent to Build Reputational Capital: An Investigation of Jordanian Telecommunications Companies

Dispersion in news sentiment and M&As outcomes

We suggest that dispersion in news sentiment, representing the dispersion in informative M&A performance forecasts, effectively captures M&A information uncertainty, disseminates information about transaction risks, and enhances investors’ ability to discern high-risk acquisition attempts. We find that consistent with the information uncertainty perspective, dispersion in news sentiment is associated with higher change in the acquirer's information uncertainty, lower M&A announcement return, and lower M&A completion probability. Examining the underlying channel, we show that media reduces information asymmetry between managers and investors and managers listen to the market due to the loss of reputational capital. Our findings are robust to additional analysis, endogeneity test, and robustness check. Overall, we argue that media can function as an alternative channel for corporate governance through dispersion in news sentiment.

Intellectual Capital in Management of Village Credit Institutions Towards Business Sustainability Based Catur Purusa Artha

Objectives: Business continuity of the Village Credit Institution in Bali is closely related to the customs and culture of Balinese society, which are based on Hinduism. The key to successful intermediation by the Village Credit Institution as a microfinance institution is heavily influenced by local rules strictly adhered to by the Balinese people. The key to competitive advantage for the Village Credit Institution can be seen from the number of strategic resources it possesses, especially immaterial or intangible assets that are not visible on the balance sheet. The research objective is to test the Resource-Based View Theory in relation to intellectual capital and business continuity of the Village Credit Institution, as measured by the philosophy of Catur Purusa Artha. Methods: The research method used to answer the research objectives involved a quantitative test with a Partial Least Square (PLS) approach. Results: The results of the research show that structural capital, social capital, and reputation capital can improve the performance and continuity of the Village Credit Institution. The mediating variable tested in this study is the performance of the Village Credit Institution, which serves as a mediating variable for the effect of structural capital, social capital, and reputation capital on the sustainability of the Village Credit Institution in Bali. Increasing structural capital involves a better understanding of the organizational structure that emphasizes internal control structures and social capital, which includes understanding the common goals of traditional villages. Reputation capital involves maintaining policies that favor indigenous villagers without sacrificing the profitability of the Village Credit Institution. Conclusion: The study concludes that intellectual capital, including structural, social, and reputation capital, plays a significant role in enhancing the performance and sustainability of the Village Credit Institution in Bali. The research highlights the importance of maintaining a balance between adhering to local customs and ensuring profitability to achieve long-term business continuity.

The use of META (virtual simulations) in Canadian junior military leadership development

The use of META (virtual simulations) in Canadian junior military leadership development

Cultural and Representative Policy of Sweden as an Element of Nation Branding

The article examines the relationship between soft power, nation branding, and educational and cultural cooperation within the framework of the Swedish Institute's policy of international cooperation to promote the country’s image abroad and strengthen the position of its reputational capital. The relevance of addressing this topic is due to the significance of the stated agenda, which, as our research has shown, influenced not only the development of cultural cooperation and academic exchanges, but also the features of building Sweden’s foreign policy image. Based on the analysis of the organization’s materials and data in reports from 2022–2023, the authors aimed to show the process of forming the priorities of the organization’s activities within the framework of the distribution of financial support and the focus of cultural and educational projects. To this end, the role and parameters of building a national brand are analyzed; changes in the topics of educational and cultural events and programs conducted by Sweden in the countries of Eastern Europe and the Baltic region are considered; the dynamics of the processes of cultural exchange between Sweden and these countries are traced; the influence of the current political situation on the volume and measures of financial assistance to them is noted; and the perception of Sweden in Russia, Eastern European and Baltic countries is characterized. The study was based on the methods of comparative analysis, discourse analysis, and case study techniques. It was concluded that in implementing a diverse range of educational and cultural programs, the Swedish Institute adheres to the principle of regionalism, which allows the implementation of such projects, taking into account the interests and needs of both Sweden and partner countries. It was shown that when determining the parameters of national branding, the Swedish Institute relies on the approach of S. Anholt, clarifying it in a number of areas. According to the findings of the study, adaptation of relevant programs for the development of cooperation with partner countries, is aimed at integrating specific Swedish values into the cultural matrix of the host cultures. The global political situation strongly influences the realization of programs, thus causing the exclusion of such an important international partner as Russia. The study confirmed the initial thesis about the relatively slow accumulation of Sweden’s reputational capital, including in the process of the Swedish Institute’s work with ‘promising’ (in the current environment) countries, as well as with the countries of Eastern Europe and the Baltic states. It is further concluded that the Swedish Institute is not only a key actor in the country's cultural and educational policy, as well as a powerful channel of soft power, but also an instrument for Sweden's positioning of itself as a moral superpower, which can be seen in many areas of its policies that go beyond fields of public diplomacy.

The Impact of Tax Avoidance and Environmental Performance on Tax Disclosure in CSR Reports

ABSTRACT This study explores how and why firms voluntarily discuss taxes in corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports. Using a textual analysis approach, we analyze 2,984 CSR reports from 22 countries to identify tax disclosures, including instances of firms explicitly relating taxes to CSR (“socially responsible tax disclosures”). We find that on average firms provide limited tax information and tend to use disclosures portraying tax payments as beneficial for society rather than presenting strategies to ensure socially responsible tax behavior. When examining possible influences on firms’ disclosure decisions, we find robust evidence of a negative association between socially responsible tax disclosures and environmental performance, consistent with firms using the disclosures to build or repair reputational capital. We also find some evidence of a positive association between socially responsible tax disclosures and tax avoidance, particularly among U.S. firms. Our results should be useful for standard setters and readers of CSR reports. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text. JEL Classifications: M41; H26; M14.

The impact of multiple sources of employees’ capital on judgments regarding potential for career advancement

PurposeThe human resource and talent management fields have been increasingly focusing on the process and criteria to identify employees’ potential for career advancement due to their impact on the competitive advantage of organizations. This paper expands the extant theoretical and empirical evidence regarding these complex decisions, namely through the combined analysis of multidimensional sources of employees' capital.Design/methodology/approachThis is a cross-sectional study. Data were collected from 384 individuals assessed by their line managers. The research model and hypotheses were tested using structured equation modeling.FindingsThe results show a positive and significant influence of four employees’ capital sources, namely: human capital (what you know), social capital (whom you know), psychological capital (who you are) and reputational capital (how others perceive us) with regard to judgments of potential for career advancement. The model explains 52% of the total variance in those judgments.Research limitations/implicationsThe data were collected using a questionnaire at a single point in time and thus, not allowing cause-effect inferences.Practical implicationsThe results provide guidance to organizational leaders to improve the decision-making process regarding judgments of potential for career advancement.Originality/valueTo our knowledge, this is the first study to examine managers’ judgments regarding the potential for career advancement using four sources of employees' capital: human, social, psychological and reputational capital. Furthermore, it considers that reputation plays a mediation role.

Corporate social responsibility: Current state and future opportunities in the forest sector

AbstractCorporate social responsibility (CSR) remains a critical topic for the forestry sector due to increasing societal expectations about the sustainable use of forests. This paper presents an updated review of the history, current state, and future opportunities for CSR in the forest sector. Drawing from cases of CSR in practice, the review focuses on CSR's role in firms' performance and reputation capital. As opposed to popular theoretical conceptualisations, firms' choice of CSR criteria, indicators, and implementation tools remain heavily weighted toward environmental concerns. Our findings suggest that CSR benefits a firm's reputation, but the review is less categorical on CSR's more direct or tangible effects in the short‐ or longer term. The review thus identifies progress in the field but concludes that opportunities exist to exploit CSR in the forestry sector more thoroughly.

Conscious Business Practices as a Driver of Reputational Capital in SMEs

Conscious Business Practices as a Driver of Reputational Capital in SMEs

La Digitalisation du Capital Social: « Consommation Ostentatoire sur Instagram »

Jean Baudrillard states, the theoretical equivalence of body and objects as signs is actually, ‘buy; you will be at peace with yourself’(Baudrillard, 2014). Baudrillard’s phrase ‘buy, and you will be at ease in your body’ has given way to ‘buy and share, you will be at ease in your body’. This research aims to investigate whether displaying purchased luxury goods on Instagram is a type of conspicuous consumption (Veblen, 1899) that may structure a new form of social capital and reputation capital as suggested by Pierre Bourdieu. We argue that this new form of social capital is a digital capital that serves to shape a contemporary reputation capital. The study involves 354 social media users and the data were gathered through an online survey. Our findings reveal that there is insufficient evidence of a relationship between high reputation capital and high social status; however, the aforementioned consumption type depicts reputation capital as a contemporary method of social capital.

‘We are open again (and again)’: communicating during COVID-19 – opportunities, challenges, and lessons learned

ABSTRACT During any crisis, how a company communicates will determine how much reputational capital is spent and how quickly the company can recover. Extending the Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) to hotel websites and social media, this paper investigates Swiss hotels’ messages during this crisis to repair their image, bolster their reputation, and attract customers back to Swiss destinations. From June 2020 to August 2021, messages from Swiss independent 4- and 5-star hotels were mined, and semantic network analysis, sentiment analysis, and an analysis of SCCT strategies were employed to investigate hoteliers’ messages during the pandemic. Hoteliers adopted different strategies between hotel website (dominated by corrective action) and social media (renewal). Hoteliers tried to create positive emotions as detected through sentiment analysis and the wide use of exclamation points. Guest was the most popular theme and concept from the semantic analysis. The emphasis on guests and positive emotion indicates the humanness of the communicated message.

The challenges facing Chinese accounting scholars publishing in English (and Chinese) language journals

AbstractInterviews with accounting scholars in China found that the pressure to publish in English language journals is high for reasons of tenure and promotion, but the expectation of acceptance is low. Publishing in Chinese language journals is equally as difficult because of socio‐cultural factors that favour a limited group of scholars with reputational capital. Scholars in China either avoid submitting articles to English language journals, collaborate with western scholars to enhance the probability of success, or focus on quantitative methodologies because of a perception that it is less demanding on language capability compared with qualitative approaches to research.

Accounting for social responsibility of business in the context of sustainable development

The paper focuses on the fundamental components of socially responsible business and their accounting in terms of dividing it into determinants that is justified by the emergence of corporate social reporting, the expansion of the boundaries of traditional accounting concerning the introduction of indicators related to social costs, environmental and atypical aspects. The aim of the research is to comprehensively analyze all components of the social accounting system, identify the peculiarities of socially responsible business in the context of sustainable development, and develop recommendations for the formation of methodological and organizational components of presenting relevant information in the reporting of enterprises. We have found that the modern system of social accounting reveals the facts of economic activities concerning the accounting of social costs, economic and environmental measures to make effective management decisions in terms of the impact of the enterprise activities on society, adapted to the requirements of the external and internal environment. An overview of scientific views on the essence of accounting for social reporting is considered using the methods of analysis, synthesis, comparison, grouping and generalization. The author’s opinion of the social accounting system involving the following main determinants as accounting for social responsibility of business, formation of accounting information in terms of sustainable development, environmental consequences of activity, accounting for atypical social components, accounting for reputational capital, is considered. We have substantiated that further implementation of social accounting and preparation of annual reports based on the proposed elements, can help in the formation of corporate and social responsibility of the company, expanding the range of interested parties: partners, customers and investors, i.e., magnetizing in the form of reputational capital.

Analysts’ Institutional Client Catering and Reputation Tradeoff: Strategic Timing of Recommendations

We examine whether sell-side analysts strategically time their favorable recommendations to cater to institutional investors while preserving analysts’ reputational capital. Although prior literature documents that analysts provide more positive recommendations for stocks that are part of their institutional clients’ (specifically, mutual funds’) portfolios, it does not explicitly address a reputation cost associated with such practice. Using a sample of analysts’ recommendations on U.S. firms for the 2002–2017 period, we document a pattern of analysts’ recommendations being more optimistic in the end month of a quarter and less optimistic in the beginning month of a quarter. This timing pattern ties to quarterly reporting periods of portfolio managers, with actively managed mutual funds’ holdings being affected the most. Analysts with Institutional Investor All-Star ranking do not engage in such stock recommendation timing practices. The market participants seem to believe rosy recommendations issued for stocks with more institutional holdings in the end month of a quarter with more positive cumulative abnormal returns to upgrade and downgrade recommendations. JEL classifications: G14, G24

Contracting Costs, Covenant-Lite Lending, and Reputational Capital

Abstract Using a large sample of leveraged loans, we provide evidence that, despite having fewer creditor control rights, covenant-lite (Cov-Lite) loans have similar recovery rates and significantly lower spreads than loans with maintenance covenants. We find that the propensity to borrow Cov-Lite is related to various proxies for the reputational capital of a borrowing firm’s private equity sponsor. We construct a simple model to illustrate the relationship between reputational capital, covenants, and loan spreads in the leveraged loan market. Our model illustrates how reputational capital can substitute for covenants in mitigating agency costs of debt, leading to lower loan spreads for Cov-Lite loans.

Board Members’ Outside Directorships and the Demand for Audit Quality: Large Sample Evidence From Private Firms

Board members with multiple directorships develop reputational capital as decision experts. Prior studies based on public firms suggest that such directors would use higher quality auditors to improve the quality of financial reporting and, thereby, protect their reputational capital. This study is the first large-scale study that investigates whether multiple directorships influence auditor choice in the setting of private firms. The result indicates a significant positive association between the proportion of board members with outside directorships and audit quality. Furthermore, it shows that the propensity to hire a higher quality auditor is significantly influenced by directors’ network. Finally, the results indicate that the incentives to invest in higher quality auditors are largely influenced by the size of the companies in which board members have their outside directorships.

The impact of e-service quality on word of mouth: A higher education context

Student satisfaction is an important determinant of university enrollment and reputational capital. This paper investigates e-service quality impact on word-of-mouth measures of student satisfaction of Romanian university students by exploring important of e-service quality dimensions. Data were collected using an online structured questionnaire of 298 Romanian students to examine the proposed research model by deploying structural equation modelling with Smart PLS 4. We find that website performance, information quality, and website confidentiality are significantly associated with e-service quality. Moreover, findings revealed a positive impact of e-service quality on word of mouth. Quality of website services contributed significantly to e-service quality and recommendation using word of mouth. Our findings provide useful insights and practical implications regarding the impact of the quality of website services upon the satisfaction of students.

Can sustainability performance mitigate the negative effect of policy uncertainty on the firm valuation?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to test if building reputation capital through environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing can mitigate the negative effect of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on firms’ valuation. Design/methodology/approach This study uses an unbalanced panel of 591 financial firms between 2005 and 2021 from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom (UK) and the USA. Ordinary least square method is used in the empirical tests. To alleviate a potential endogeneity problem, robustness tests are performed using the two-stage least square approach with instrumental variables. Findings The results of this paper show that sustainable reporting can offset the negative effect of EPU on the valuation of financial firms. Consistent with the stakeholder-based reputation-building hypothesis, sustainability performance may have an insurance-like impact on firms’ valuation during periods of high uncertainty. Practical implications According to the findings, during high policy uncertainty periods, investors accept to pay a premium for the stocks of the firms which built social capital through environmental and social investments. Accordingly, it is suggested that regulatory bodies and governments motivate firms to increase their stakeholder orientation to attain higher reputation capital. Social implications Managers can mitigate the negative impact of policy uncertainty on the value of their firms via building social capital, which will increase financial market stability in return, and portfolio investors may use such firms for portfolio optimization decisions. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first to examine the mitigating role of ESG investing on EPU and firm valuation relationships for financial firms. Thus, this study provides new insights related to the impact of ESG performance on valuation during uncertain times.

The relationship between R&D intensity, conservatism, and management earnings forecast issuance

R&D-intensive firms suffer from high information asymmetry and high proprietary costs and are prone to exhibit bottom-line losses given the unconditional conservative accounting treatment of R&D expenses. We examine how R&D intensity influences the issuance of management earnings forecasts (MEFs) across levels of accounting conservatism, controlling for proprietary costs and other earnings guidance determinants. We provide insights into how managers view the tradeoffs of using MEF disclosures to lower information asymmetry versus the costs of releasing proprietary information to competitors and the loss of reputational capital that could arise from providing inaccurate forecasts. We find that although R&D intensity and conditional conservatism are negatively related to the issuance of MEFs, as shown in prior research, at high levels of research intensity and the accompanying uncertainty about future payoffs, the negative association between conditional conservatism and MEF issuance is mitigated. These findings point to a role for conditional conservatism as a credibility enhancer for managers of R&D intense firms.