Corporate Reputation and Corporate Ethics: Looking Good or Doing Well

Abstract

Corporate reputation (CR) has become a fashionable topic due, among other reasons, to the recent financial and economic crisis and spreading corporate scandals. Given its interdisciplinary character and intangible nature, CR has been a frequent issue in many disciplines, but scarcely present in the business ethics field. This neglect is odd since a good reputation is one of the most valuable consequences of doing the right things and the things right. In this paper, we intend to explain this absence through three hypotheses: a) business ethics literature largely identifies corporate reputation and corporate social responsibility; b) corporate reputation overlaps with corporate image and corporate identity, resulting interchangeable constructs; and c) business ethics scholars have focused on the negative side of the reputation phenomenon, highlighting reputational risk more than benefits. Based on a bibliometric analysis of the top journal of business ethics literature over a recent decade (2002-2011), we finally confirmed the three hypotheses although c) only partially. In addition, the findings of this study will allow for a deeper understanding of the link between looking good and doing well.

Keywords: corporate reputation, corporate image, corporate identity, corporate ethics, corporate social responsibility