Corporate reputation: Meaning and measurement

TLDR

Corporate reputation has attracted interest from academia, business, and media, reflecting its growing importance. This study aims to clarify the construct of corporate reputation by untangling terminological problems arising from interdisciplinary research. The authors review the concepts of reputation, image, and identity, propose a structure that labels them as allied constructs, and examine how reputation has been measured. The review reveals widespread confusion over basic terms that has hindered grounded measurement tools, but recent clarification of the constructs now enables researchers to test claimed relationships with performance, employee, and customer satisfaction, and highlights issues that can be assessed under a clearer conceptualization.

Abstract

Corporate reputation has attracted interest from a wide range of academic disciplines. It is also a growing focus for business and media attention. This paper examines the construct of corporate reputation, first by untangling the terminological problems that have been caused by the interdisciplinary nature of much of the earlier work in the area. The construct of reputation and the allied constructs of image and identity are each reviewed. A structure is proposed in which the three constructs can be seen as labelling different but allied concepts. I then move on to consider how reputation has been measured. The paper uncovers considerable confusion in the use of what might appear to be basic terms and links this to a subsequent lack of grounded measurement tools in the sector, until relatively recently. With a clearer understanding of the construct of corporate reputation and the allied constructs of image and identity, researchers are now well placed to test the relationships widely claimed by practitioners between corporate reputation and other variables such as commercial performance and employee and customer satisfaction. The review ends by illustrating some of the issues that can be assessed from the basis of a clearer conceptualization of reputation and its measurement.