Corporate reputation, social performance, and organizational variability in an emerging country perspective

Abstract

Abstract This study estimated and specified a model of corporate reputation, its social performance, and firm-level variables in the context of an emerging country. Corporate reputation is the overall estimation of a firm by its stakeholders expressed by the demonstrative behaviors to its customers, employees, investors, business partners, and general public. The social performance of the firm has been conceptualized in terms of its demonstrative responsible behavior toward community, environment, and employees. Organizational variability has been captured in this study through the representation of firms from various industries as the relationship between corporate reputation and firm’s social performance was contingent on the type of industry and expectation of industry-specific stakeholders relevant to the firm. Data were collected from 220 organizations representing 11 different industry verticals. The findings supported that corporate reputation is determined by the conjoint influence of a host of firm specific as well as its social performance factors. In addition, the reputational effect of firm’s social performance was found to vary both across and within sectors, according to the various types of social performance activities the firm was engaged in. This study demonstrated the comprehensive measures of the firm’s reputation, social performance, and the associative relationship between them conditioned by firm-specific attributes and nature of the industry. The study has far reaching implications in terms of managing the firm’s boundary spanning activities and relationships in the perspective of emerging markets.