Corporate Reputation Management: Reaching Out to Financial Stakeholders

Corporate reputation is important for firms’ long-term performance and competitive advantages. This dissertation sets out to understand the relationship between corporate reputation and a company’s attractiveness to financial stakeholders from different angles. Specifically, I examine the role of corporate reputation in the context of the agency problem to explain the causal chain through which the uncertainties and risks are mitigated for investors. This dissertation contributes to the multifaceted conceptualization of reputation (1) by examining different economic values of overall corporate reputation and its pre-condition—visibility, (2) by considering reputation among different stakeholders—public stakeholders and financial stakeholders, and (3) by distinguishing two dimensions of financial reputation—trustworthiness and attractiveness. Acknowledging this multifaceted conceptualization of corporate reputation is crucial for firms to develop an effective strategy for reputation management, and further achieving competitive advantages. The overarching finding across the studies is that reputation management contributes to both attracting financial stakeholders and achieving a superior financial performance of the corporation. Particularly, I identified the mediating role of financial reputation in the mechanism through which public reputation affects financial performance. This result also contributes to the understanding of how reputations among different stakeholder groups affect financial performance differently.

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