Reputation and leadership: a study about reputational transfer in family and non-family firms

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to determine the influence of the family on the reputational transfer between the company and its manager. In the field of family businesses, the strong identification of the family with the company has led to the study of the relationship between corporate reputation and the level of family involvement. However, the mutual transfer of reputation between the family business and its manager has yet to be investigated. For this reason, the study also aims to contrast that the corporate reputation contributes to that of its manager, studying how the presence of a family in the management and/or control of the company affects this relationship. To this end, using the rankings published by the Spanish Corporate Reputation Monitor (MERCO) of the most reputable companies and leaders in Spain for the period 2001-2017, different econometric models have been formulated with panel data. The results obtained, with important practical implications, contribute to reputation research and, especially, to the literature on family businesses. In this sense, the results show not only that the family nature of the company gives a reputational advantage to the company and its leader, but also that the reputation of the family business managers is transferred to the corporate reputation in a shorter period of time than when the company does not share this nature.