DiMaggio and Powell (1983) and Meyer and Rowan (1977) use institutional theory to inform their stream of CR research. This influenced the work of Staw and Epstein (2000) on how CR emerges in organizational interactions. Rindova et al. (2005) redefined the idea of CR as a social construct derived from the collective awareness and acceptance of an organization in its stakeholder environment.
Therefore, not only does good CR ensure compliance, it also provides the company with a head start on any new legislation in the future. In the third stage, coders searched for the phrase ‘corporate reputation’ in every article, using the electronic search function. The content of the 235 articles relating to CR was selected by the coders and then transferred to an Excel spreadsheet. Discrepancies between markers, based on their individual assessments, were discussed and agreement reached. Only those articles regarded as relevant on both occasions by both coders proceeded to the next coding phase. This process ensured consistency in the classification of articles, suitable for further analysis.
Finally, managers should carefully consider the importance of sustainability criteria and social standards as part of CR because modern customers are increasingly critical and less forgiving (Yang et al., 2021). SCM is currently troubled by a lack of visibility throughout extended supply chains, as corporations often have complex supplier networks operating at multiple tiers (Panwar et al., 2022). Authors from the Differentiated School of Thought consider CR and corporate image as two different but interrelated theoretical concepts.
Cluster 2 is almost exclusively concerned with the end-consumer which explains the preference from working with theories stemming predominantly from marketing. Cluster 3 adopts an individualistic perspective and works with the theories that shed light on individual actors and their identities. Cluster 4 typically explores questions around theory development and methods of measurement (Table 2). Every transaction that occurs in a business can be recorded as a credit in one account and debit in another.
About this article
Thus, it is difficult to mitigate reputational risks in supply chains that are globally dispersed. Rajagopal et al. (2021) and Rajagopal et al. (2017) introduced the idea of looking at risk drivers from upstream and downstream supply chain partners, arguing that reputational risk is clearly overlooked in the supply chain literature. In addition, Dhingra and Krishnan (2021) explored social and environmental reputation costs along the supply chain and identified the importance of reputational risk sharing between supply chain partners. They highlight the lack of research in a supply chain context regarding reputation risk management and call for research to identify ways of substantially reducing reputational risks in supply chain settings. Mani and Gunasekaran (2018) echo these concerns, exploring how ethical behaviors and actions along global supply chains affect firm reputation.
Specifically, Friedman (1970) and other Chicago School economists prompted debate on whether businesses were over-regulated to the detriment of macroeconomic performance. They argued that a company’s only responsibility was to its shareholders, while adhering to the legal system in which they operated. In the 1980s, the development of CR as a scientific topic began, utilizing theoretical approaches from business economics. In this context, CR theory was founded on game, signaling, and stakeholder theories (Weigelt & Camerer, 1988).
- Figure 6 presents a linear input-through-output process of a supply chain, where CR is formed along the supply chain.
- Most organisations are already doing something positive under the Corporate Responsibility/ Corporate Social Responsibility heading, but have not fully recognised it as such.
- However, we firstly need to provide foundational research on CR before investigating the interplay between different intangible assets in a SCM context.
- Furthermore, we continued with the ranking of questions beginning with the ones that are currently critical to move the field forward and others that are suitable for subsequent exploration.
- Granovetter (1985) and White (1981) point out how social rankings and reviews strongly influence stakeholders’ perceptions of CR.
- Researchers agree that the topic of CR must be covered from a broader stakeholder perspective, which renders a single-dimensional approach insufficient.
By having a management review from an external consultant, you can pull all these efforts together and create a plan for sustainable improvement within your business. Corporate reputation is a unique, intangible, status-based asset, emerging from the stakeholders’ perception of the firm’s future commitments and how closely it previously acted within the overall expectations of its stakeholders, based on their beliefs and values. This is judged by their evaluation of future commitments and past experience with the company (i.e., prior actions, performance, and behavior).
Publications
In the 1990s, sociological perspectives informed academic perspectives on CR, drawing on organizational and social identity theories (Walker, 2010). Transparency, sustainability, and security of supply are essential for mitigating reputational risks along the supply chain (Gereffi et al., 2022; Phillips et al., 2022; Seuring et al., 2022). Transparency must also exist when it comes to information flows, as clear and direct communication, as a reputational trigger, is a fundamental part of reputation management within supply chains (Lemke & Petersen, 2013; Panwar et al., 2022). The research questions listed in Table 4 were extracted from the pool of SLR articles dating from 2018 onwards. In the time span considered, we identified a total of 172 questions for further research.
One theory asserts that the DR and CR come from the Latin present active infinitives of debitum and creditum, which are debere and credere, respectively. Another theory is that DR stands for “debit record” and CR stands for “credit record.” Finally, some believe the DR notation is short for “debtor” and CR is short for “creditor.” All content on this website, including dictionary, thesaurus, literature, geography, and other reference data is for informational purposes only. This information should not be considered complete, up to date, and is not intended to be used in place of a visit, consultation, or advice of a legal, medical, or any other professional. A debit reflects money coming into a business’s account, which is why it is a positive.
Marketing and Sales
As the Boohoo.com case demonstrates, end-customers may not be the only actors shaping CR but it could be any stakeholder along the chain (Dewalska-Opitek & Bilińska-Reformat, 2021). This change is helpful when examining reputational spillover effects in a supply chain context. Following the argument of Petersen and Lemke (2015), one actor can utilize reputational triggers (i.e., offering, communication, and action) which may cause reputational aspects of the initiating actor to spill to others. For instance, ‘being innovative’ may spill from the supplier to the manufacturer when working with this supplier.
Whereas early work on value co-creation focused on seller-customer dyads, this article introduces and advocates a supply chain perspective. However, as demonstrated by the SLR, a supply chain perspective is typically lacking within the CR literature while the supply chain literature falls short on its treatment of CR. The majority are UK-based academics, and their research relates to the fields of marketing and consumer behavior.
Overall, this cluster focuses on CR as a customer-centric concept (Walsh et al., 2015). Dahlmann and Roehrich (2019) highlight that the engagement of an organization with its supply chain partners is crucial for the development of sustainable supply chains. This research field is complex because changes in a firm’s CR, resulting from the actions of one or more of its partners, can alter profoundly its relationships with other stakeholders. For example, during the Covid-19 pandemic, sales of internet-based fast fashion retailer Boohoo.com surged.
Consolidated Definition of CR
In the network analysis, a dot represents a journal and dot sizes indicate the volume of publications on the CR topic. The analysis also illustrates the proximity of journals, based on co-referencing frequency. service department definition When working with the 1922 publications, we identified the most cited CR authors between 1975 and 2021, grouping authors with fifty or more citations, and plotted co-citation maps (Fig. 5).
Corporate responsibility (CR) – why is it important?
In a chain setting, managing these demands is challenging with IT advancements, such as cloud solutions for mitigating risk during global crises, becoming increasingly prevalent. Specifically, companies are moving applications and parts of their IT infrastructure to the cloud to simplify data management to minimize risks, including reputational risks, along the supply chain (Colicchia et al., 2018; Singh, 2021). A traceable and transparent information management system is critical, especially when deliveries of important components for production are delayed or not delivered at all (Colicchia et al., 2018; Golan et al., 2020). Within this cluster, organizational authenticity and its influence on corporate purpose as well as CR has been a key area in recent research. One strand of literature seeks to understand the future of work and its influence on organizations (Jiang et al., 2022; Valdés et al., 2022).
However, we firstly need to provide foundational research on CR before investigating the interplay between different intangible assets in a SCM context. This paper, thus, represents a starting point for further research on CR and its connection with SCM and potential reputational risks. It is an attempt to rectify an existing bias and provide a basis for future studies in this vital area.
