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.

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The Reputational Landscape

This study examines the influence of three components of corporate social responsibility on team performance. In the proposed model of this study, team performance is indirectly affected by three dimensions of perceived corporate citizenship (i.e., economic, legal, and ethical citizenship) via the mediation of team efficacy and team self-esteem. Surveying members of 172 teams confirms most of our hypothesized effects. Our results show that economic citizenship influences team performance via the mediation of both team efficacy and team self-esteem. However, legal citizenship influences team performance via team efficacy alone, whereas ethical citizenship influences team performance only via team self-esteem. We discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of our findings.

Corporate social responsibility and team performance: The mediating role of team efficacy and team self-esteem

Prior studies in the contemporary literature have largely ignored the important role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in shaping employees’ views of self and nature. Although researchers have recently started to pay considerable attention to explore the link between CSR and environmental sustainability, determining how CSR can be effective in shaping the proenvironmental behavior of employees that is missing in the existing literature. The objective of the present research study is to test the impact of microlevel CSR activities to induce environmental performance of an organization with a mediating effect of employees’ pro-environmental behaviors. This study argues that CSR activities of an organization motivate the workers to rethink the relationship between self and nature; hence, they are encouraged to participate in activities that are helpful in terms of preserving the environment, such as participating in pro-environmental activities at the workplace. The proposed model of the study was tested in the banking sector of Pakistan and analyzed by using the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique in AMOS software. The results revealed that microlevel CSR activities, using employee proenvironmental behaviors as a mediator, directly and indirectly influence environmental performance of a bank. The results of the present study are helpful for policymakers of different banking institutions to understand how they can reduce the environmental footprint of their bank by using a well-planned CSR program that can induce transcendent emotions in employees to create a sustainable environment.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/3/1499/pdf

CSR as a Potential Motivator to Shape Employees’ View towards Nature for a Sustainable Workplace Environment

Does perceived corporate social responsibility motivate hotel employees to voice? The role of felt obligation and positive emotions

Entrepreneurs with social goals face various challenges; insights into how these entrepreneurs experience and appreciate their work remain a black box though. Drawing on identity, conservation of resources, and person–organization fit theories, this study examines how entrepreneurs’ social value creation beliefs relate to their work-related well-being (job satisfaction, work engagement, and lack of work burnout), as well as how this process might be influenced by social concerns with respect to the common good. Using data from the German Public Value Atlas 2015 and 2019 and the Swiss Public Value Atlas 2017, a three-study design analyzes three samples of entrepreneurs in Germany and Switzerland. Study 1 reveals that entrepreneurs report higher job satisfaction when they believe their organization creates social value. Study 2 indicates that these beliefs relate negatively to work burnout; entrepreneurs’ perceptions of having meaningful work mediate this relationship. Study 3 affirms and extends these results by showing that a sense of work meaningfulness mediates the relationship between social value creation beliefs and work engagement and that this mediating role is more prominent among entrepreneurs with strong social concerns. This investigation thus identifies a critical pathway—the extent to which entrepreneurs experience their work activities as important and personally meaningful—that connects social value creation beliefs with enhanced work-related well-being, as well as how this process might vary with a personal orientation that embraces the common good.

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Doing Good, Feeling Good? Entrepreneurs’ Social Value Creation Beliefs and Work-Related Well-Being

Recent research highlights the positive effects of organizational CSR engagement on employee outcomes, such as job and life satisfaction, performance, and trust. We argue that the current debate fails to recognize the potential risks associated with CSR. In this study, we focus on the risk of work addiction. We hypothesize that CSR has per se a positive effect on employees and can be classified as a resource. However, we also suggest the existence of an array of unintended negative effects of CSR. Since CSR positively influences an employee’s organizational identification, as well as his or her perception of engaging in meaningful work, which in turn motivates them to work harder while neglecting other spheres of their lives such as private relationships or health, CSR indirectly increases work addiction. Accordingly, organizational identification and work meaningfulness both act as buffering variables in the relationship, thus suppressing the negative effect of CSR on work addiction, which weakens the positive role of CSR in the workplace. Drawing on a sample of 565 Swiss employees taken from the 2017 Swiss Public Value Atlas dataset, our results provide support for our rationale. Our results also provide evidence that the positive indirect effects of organizational CSR engagement on work addiction, via organizational identification and work meaningfulness, become even stronger when employees care for the welfare of the wider public (i.e., the community, nation, or world). Implications for research and practice are discussed.

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Too Much of a Good Thing? On the Relationship Between CSR and Employee Work Addiction

Organizational public value and organizational reputation are different concepts stemming from independent research traditions. Nevertheless, the constructs share several similarities, which make a systematic comparison and investigation of their relationship a promising and necessary endeavor. In this paper, we compare the two constructs along seven dimensions, with special attention to the micro-level of individual psychology. Several similarities regarding strategic relevance, locus of control, measurement unit, process dynamics, and axiological nature exist. As we will see, the constructs differ significantly with respect to the basis of evaluation and their dominant logic. We draw on a recent micro-foundation of public value to elaborate on these differences and develop propositions about how the constructs are related. Public value applies a holistic basis of evaluation covering all basic values and collective frames of reference, while reputation is more adaptive. Moreover, public value follows a logic of contribution (to a collective), while reputation follows a logic of recognition (by a collective). The two constructs should not be taken as similar or used interchangeably. However, both fields can benefit from a joint theoretical basis and micro-foundation, as well as from connected research programs. Practitioners should consider both constructs in connection.

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Same Same but Different: the Relationship Between Organizational Reputation and Organizational Public Value

Unternehmen sind sich zunehmend ihres Gemeinwohlbeitrages bewusst, weshalb Instrumente zu dessen Messung an Bedeutung gewinnen. Die Gemeinwohl-Bilanz ist ein aktuell erfolgreiches Instrument, welches vor allem in kleineren und mittleren Unternehmen eingesetzt wird.
Eine Studie untersuchte, wie Manager die Vorstellung und erstmalige Implementierung der Gemeinwohl-Bilanz reflektierten. Die Ergebnisse der Studie verweisen sowohl auf positive Effekte fur die Unternehmens-entwicklung in den durch die Bilanz adressierten Bereichen als auch auf damit verbundene Probleme. Der Beitrag schliest mit einer kritischen Betrachtung des in der Bilanz operationalisierten Gemeinwohlverstandnisses. Hier zeigt sich, dass eine Enge in der
Auslegung und ein grundsatzliches Legitimationsdefizit einer Einfuhrung der Bilanz in dieser Form entgegenstehen.

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Die Gemeinwohl-Bilanz - Wichtige Anstösse, aber im Legitimationsdefizit

The illustrated matrix with all value awareness levels of a subject added to the fields, can be referred to as the subject’s value awareness profile. A correlation analysis could allow one to derive the most desirable value awareness profiles in the sense that they are antecedent to (public) value creation. Value awareness is strongly connected to fundamental processes concerning and constituting an individual’s self and identity. The illustrated (public) value matrix with an indication of the emphasis a subject puts on each value category is called the subject’s value emphasis profile. Value awareness essentially means being able to assume a meta-perspective on one’s value categories and as such to recognize the relevance systems one applies, or could apply. With more value awareness, humans could be better equipped to meet the demands of modern society as they increase their cognitive complexity to find, emphasize and consequently create true value for themselves, others and society as whole.

Andreas Fröhlich

Papers

Too Much of a Good Thing? On the Relationship Between CSR and Employee Work Addiction

Same Same but Different: the Relationship Between Organizational Reputation and Organizational Public Value

Die Gemeinwohl-Bilanz - Wichtige Anstösse, aber im Legitimationsdefizit

More value awareness for more (public) value: recognizing how and for whom value is truly created