Strategy & Leadership

Strategy & Leadership

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Maximizing the strategic value of corporate reputation: a business model perspective

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Practitioner Paper corporate reputation, business model, utilitarian reputation, social reputation

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Maximizing the strategic value of reputation: a business model perspective

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Qiaoling “Amy” Ma and Oleksiy Osiyevskyy Qiaoling “Amy” Ma is a Research Associate at D’Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University, Boston ([email protected]). Oleksiy Osiyevskyy is an Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship & Innovation, University of Calgary, Canada, and Northeastern University ([email protected]).

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exactly can a company strategically utilize its reputation? Which component of reputation should it emphasize: quality, as in the case of Apple and BMW, or social responsibility, which is the approach chosen by Whole Foods? Or perhaps a firm can do well by keeping both just at legally acceptable levels, as Walmart does? Then there are companies like Goldman Sachs that thrive in the marketplace having both a good and bad reputation simultaneously. To provide actionable answers that are useful to practitioners, we examine the role of reputational capital in the business models of a number of well-known companies.

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Consensus among management researchers and practitioners suggests the importance of corporate reputation in securing and maintaining a firm’s competitive advantage (see Exhibit 1). In the era of digital media and usergenerated content on the Internet, the corporate system for fostering and maintaining its reputation is always on display and is always open to challenges by customers and other stakeholders. A corporate misstep can become a public spectacle on Twitter, YouTube and even Comedy Central. New digital technologies supply price information to buyers and dramatically empower individual consumers, who can now interact with each other 24/7 and across geographic boundaries, quickly sharing the good or bad stories about the company. This abundance of user-generated information helps other customers evaluate sellers’ value propositions, creates more choices and ultimately substantively affects buying decisions.1 In effect, a network of stakeholders is created, and its reputational judgments can determine who will partner with a company, a crucial issue as ecosystems become essential to competitive advantage. Corporate reputation and competitive advantage: insights from three decades of studies2 One of the benefits of corporate reputation is that it signals the company’s future likely behaviors; such positive signals reduce stakeholders’ uncertainties and foster consumer trust in the firm. Moreover, favorable organizational reputation reinforces the positive customer-company identification – the cognitive overlap between a customer’s self-image and his or her perception of the company. This

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fosters the customers’ impression that the company’s values--reflected in its reputation--are aligned with their personal values. 3 Over time, corporate reputation becomes a basis of trust and customer-company identification. This can be developed into a valuable intangible asset and the source of competitive advantage, leading to numerous positive organizational outcomes, such as maintaining good business relationships, or acquiring support and mobilizing resources of key stakeholders--customers and partners in the value chain, government and local communities. 4 Favorable corporate reputation can also improve the firm’s cost position and allow it to charge premium prices. Corporate reputation has been shown to correlate with market share growth, higher return on capital/assets and above-average net profit margins for established firms.5 In new ventures, attractive reputation helps secure the support of investors and the confidence of potential customers.6

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So how should a company design a reputation strategy that is aligned with its business model? And how can a corporation actively manage its reputational assets within the context of its business model to maximize the value of its reputation?7

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Corporate reputation within the business model framework A corporate reputation is an evaluation of the degree of favorability that stakeholders hold toward the company, measured on a continuum from negative (unfavorable) to positive (favorable).8 This evaluation is a composite of stakeholder assessments along different dimensions — for example, quality, innovativeness, social responsibility, market prominence and transparency.9 For practical purposes, particularly important are two distinct perspectives: the utilitarian dimension, and the social dimension10.

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Utilitarian. This dimension of corporate reputation reflects a stakeholder’s assessment of the company’s ability to serve his or her personal needs through delivering tangible outcomes. For example, customers are sensitive to a business’s reputation for product quality, innovativeness and for focusing on customer experience; investors care about reputation for financial performance and industry leadership; while employees continually assess the workplace environment. For customers, this dimension is sometimes generalized as “product and service efficacy,” an assessment of quality and the opportunity cost of interacting with the company, measured in money, time and effort – the perceived value. 11 Social. In contrast, this dimension of corporate reputation--also called reputation for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) or ‘Social Ethicality’ 12 -- reflects the evaluation of the company’s ability to address the needs of all stakeholders and society in general. It is based on the expectation that a company will treat its stakeholders fairly and adhere to established norms and rules on environmental and social responsibilities. A company’s CSR reputation signals its foreseeable behaviors as it delivers value to all stakeholders, and reflects the firm’s

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commitment to resolving and reducing societal problems beyond its own narrow economic interests Both dimensions of corporate reputation – utilitarian and social – can affect the success of a business model, enabling a firm to charge higher prices in some cases, like BMW or Apple, or attract and retain additional customers--as in the case of Toms Shoes, whose slogan is, “For every product you purchase we will help a person in need.” However, a company can be high on one reputational dimension and low on another. As an example, Apple has an outstanding product efficacy reputation but its CSR reputation suffers from allegations of poor oversight over labor practices in the company’s supply chain in Southeast Asia.13

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Having a mediocre CSR or utilitarian reputation is increasingly risky. The future may turn out to be “either 5-stars or 1-star” world, with Yelp and similar platforms critically disadvantaging the middle-ground of many markets, keeping only top performers and the ones whose business model is insensitive to reputational erosion. This increases the likelihood that the distribution of possible reputation levels will become increasingly bimodal--either high or low, with almost nothing in between--and can be properly mapped on a 2x2 matrix (see Exhibit 1).

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Exhibit 1:Linking Corporate Reputation and Business Model

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#4 Double Emphasis:

Toms Shoes, Goodwill #1 Non-strategic Reputation Management:

Whole Foods Market, Google

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Walmart, Dish Network Low

#2 Utilitarian Emphasis: Monsanto, Goldman Sachs

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As the following cases demonstrate, any combination of the two reputational dimensions can be widely effective in specific contexts. For example, dollar store chains can safely ignore the “1-star” reviews for quality or CSR, in that their customers will still come for low prices. But Whole Foods’s financial outlook might be threatened if it becomes involved in disputes over its social positions or its price/quality proposition. #1 Non-strategic Reputation Management

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The companies in the Non-strategic Reputation Management quadrant take a tactical approach to secure the stakeholder support. They do so, for example, by appealing to price-conscious customers’ utilitarian concerns--everyday low prices--without signaling their future likely behaviors or building trust. The industries where non-strategic reputation strategy can be effective sell products that are tangible, easy-to-evaluate and don’t involve an exceptional personal experience. For example, retailers of low-price household products have no need to signal high product quality or firm benevolence. Such products are referred to as “search goods,” because their characteristics and objective quality are easily evaluated before the purchase.14

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No more Non-strategic Reputation Management for ‘experience/postexperience goods’ providers Embracing the Non-strategic Reputation Management model can destroy the companies selling “experience goods” -- whose quality cannot be evaluated in advance, but only during the consumption -- or “post-experience goods” --whose quality is impossible for consumers to evaluate either before or during the consumption. These include, for example, vitamin supplements, car or plumbing repairs, and most cruise vacations. In such cases, the consumers make their choice primarily on the basis of supplier’s reputation, and this asset becomes the providers’ primary source of competitive advantage. Poor reviews circulated via the Web, then becoming sensationalized by other media, could threaten the foundations of the conventional business models of “experience/post-experience goods” providers.15 Some may attempt tactical reputational changes, but other companies may be forced to move to other quadrants by the availability of new sources of reputational information. For example, in the pre-Internet era, information about the quality of healthcare providers -- as measured by the treatment success rate--was difficult or even impossible for potential customers to obtain. But today physician review platforms provide the information customers need, to steer clear of shoddy providers and seek out the ones who have higher scores.16

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When buying search goods, the customers’ risk of making the wrong choice is minimal. For companies in the Non-strategic Reputation Management quadrant the goal is only to keep their reputations at the minimally acceptable level, to prevent stakeholder backlash. It is particularly important to emphasize that the battle lines of competition can force a company to make rapid tactical changes to preserve elements of its reputation that distinguish it from its rivals. For example, McDonalds recently stopped selling hamburgers made from frozen meat to compete with Wendys. It is worth noting that the distribution, storage and cooking of fresh meat introduces a significantly greater health risk to this aspect of McDonalds “menu revolution.” Two examples of successful Non-strategic Reputation Management business models are Walmart and Dish Network. Walmart is a multinational retailer with more than 2.3 million employees worldwide and annual revenue of $482 billion in 2016. 17 Walmart’s business model successfully delivers low-price products to

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customers and allows it to maintain the largest market share in the retail industry. However, its low-price/large-scale business model brings problems in the reputation realm. For example, to maintain the lowest costs, it is known for paying low wages and forcing suppliers to lower prices by any means. All of these actions in support of its business model foster a negative corporate reputation and a stream of criticisms. Walmart has been accused of paying such low wages that employees must rely on governmental support to feed their families. Its critics say it destroys local business communities and squeezes suppliers to maintain unrealistically low prices, which results in poor working conditions along the supply chain, high accident rates and environmental infractions.18 In response, Walmart tries to keep its reputation--both the utilitarian and social dimensions--at the minimally acceptable level by slowly and incrementally increasing the hourly rates, introducing better health care and working with its suppliers to reduce waste and increase environmental sustainability.19

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Dish Network is an American satellite television provider, with 19,000 employees and net sale of $15.1 billion in 2015.20 The company’s lack of concerns for its reputation was manifested in 2013 when it was listed in MSN.com’s Customer Service Hall of Shame because of its “aggressive sales tactics, confusing contracts and unreasonable cancellation fees.”21 Not only its customers, but also its employees seem to dislike the company: In 2013, Dish Network was rated as the worst company to work for by 24/7 Wall Street’s Analysis of Glassdoor data.22

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Yet despite their dubious reputational record, both companies are quite successful in the marketplace. This achievement suggests that in some environments—such as, low-cost, efficiency-based competition and tangible and easy-to-assess in advance “search goods”--keeping the corporate reputation at a minimally acceptable level can be a viable strategy.

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#2 Utilitarian Emphases Companies in the Utilitarian Emphasis quadrant emphasize customer-specific aspects of their reputation: for example, innovation, quality, or customer value. High utilitarian reputation allows such companies to maintain customer loyalty and – by this means – to lower the marketing costs and potentially to charge higher prices. These business models are effective in the markets of intangible, experience-based products, where the quality of the offering cannot be properly evaluated when consumers are making the selection. Instead, the quality might be revealed only during the consumption (“experience goods”), or might not be revealed at all (“post-experience goods”); in such markets, the reputation becomes a key basis for competition. For customers, the high utilitarian reputation of such firms acts as a proxy for future quality, and they are willing to pay extra for this assurance.

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What distinguishes companies in the Utilitarian Emphasis quadrant from those in the Double Emphasis quadrant is their deliberate negligence of their reputation for CSR, keeping it at the minimally acceptable (neutral) level to prevent a backlash from activist stakeholders or pressure groups. For companies in the Utilitarian Emphasis quadrant, the business model value proposition hinges upon the benefits that their customers are getting, sometimes at some cost to the other stakeholders. An example of such company is Monsanto, a multinational agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology company with over 20 000 employees and $13.5 billion of annual revenue in 2016. 23 From the utilitarian reputation perspective, Monsanto has regularly received awards for employees’ innovation, leadership and workplace satisfaction. It has been ranked as No. 1 of the World’s Most Admired Companies in its industry sector by Fortune magazine.24 The company is committed to helping farmers improve their harvest and use water more efficiently. Yet, its reputation for CSR is struggling because of stakeholders’ constant concerns about restrictive patenting and threats of negative health and environmental impact of its products.25

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The Goldman Sachs Group, a global investment bank with more than $33.8 billion revenue in 2015, 26 is another successful company with a “bipolar” reputation.27 On the one hand, the company’s favorable utilitarian reputation is supported by its “best investment bank” award28 and by being ranked “the best brand name in business.” 29 As a major player in financial markets its CSR reputation took a big hit, like that of other Wall Street firms, after the global financial crisis of 2008.30

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#3 Social Emphases The companies within the Social Emphasis quadrant build their value propositions around the reputation for CSR. Their utilitarian reputation is usually at the level of competitors--for example, fair-price coffee is about the same quality as generic coffee, but more expensive because it pays growers equitably. These companies are differentiating themselves on the market by serving the social concerns of customers and other important stakeholders. This differentiation allows such firms to charge higher prices, with the part of the margins going to supporting socially important causes. Such business models usually target affluent customers, who are willing to pay extra for transactions that help solve societal problems. Social Emphasis companies achieve the customer loyalty and willingness to pay through building trust and customercompany identification. They need to constantly communicate the social good they are doing in order to maintain stakeholder recognition of their offering’s value proposition.

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Such companies can be pure social enterprises, such as Goodwill Industries International Inc., the second largest nonprofit organization in the United States, with 2014 revenue of $5.37 billion. Others are for-profit firms with social

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responsibility as a significant component of their value proposition: for example, Toms Shoes has a “one-for-one” business model, promising that for every pair of shoes sold, a new pair of shoes is given to a person in need. #4 Double Emphases Companies in the Double Emphasis quadrant leverage both aspects of corporate reputation, scoring high on CSR and utilitarian dimensions. Their policy of “doing well by doing good” usually comes at the cost of lower efficiency. They may compensate for this by charging higher prices to some of their customers. The successful companies in this quadrant are either uncontested market leaders, like Google, or are targeting the less price sensitive high-end market, like Whole Foods. The key to success with such business models is in achieving the synergies between CSR and regular activities. For example, the search giant Google invests in tech-based projects to solve the toughest problems in the world, such as expanding access to clean water, stopping wildlife poaching and preventing human trafficking. To enhance its reputation, Whole Foods engages in socially responsible sourcing and generous revenue sharing arrangements.

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To successfully enhance company reputation by tackling a major social issue while simultaneously creating shareholder wealth requires resources and capabilities that most companies don’t have. Therefore, before jousting with complex social issues, the thoughtful cultivation of sophisticated capabilities could allow a particular company to be more effective and efficient than its peers. For instance, while some pharmaceutical companies just sent their out-date medicines to underdeveloped countries, Merck chose to focus its resources on treating epidemic river blindness in Africa.31

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Guidance for leaders Corporate reputation is a key intangible asset within a firm. Its astute management leads to tangible shareholder benefits; for established companies these include increased profit and clearer market evaluation, and for new ventures they include higher growth rate, lower risk and increased access to funding. In the current era of social media, the importance of reputation for firmlevel value creation and capture becomes even more pronounced. Empowered customers now have simple means to obtain the information about any company, including the facts that it would prefer to hide; these insights affect customers’ purchase decisions and willingness to pay premiums or demand discounts.

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The benefits of corporate reputation do not follow automatically; rather, “the reputational rent” is created and appropriated through a proper, deliberately designed business model. The linkage of a firm’s corporate reputation and its business model, can be charted in a typology of approaches for reaping the rewards of corporate reputation. Exhibit 2 summarizes our suggestions: Exhibit 2

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Quadrant

Favorable Environment

Non-strategic Reputation Management

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Low-cost, efficiencybased strategic position Tangible, easy-toevaluate products and services (“search goods”) Economic downturns Differentiation-based strategic position Intangible, experience-based products (“experience goods” / “post-experience goods,” whose quality cannot be evaluated in advance) Economic boom Economic boom Sufficient number of affluent customers Saliency of social concerns in the society (e.g., EU versus US)

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Customer Buy-In Mechanisms

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Economically appealing value proposition for customers

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Economically appealing value proposition Loyalty to highquality brand

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Social Emphasis

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Protected market leadership position High-end market CSR-utilitarian synergy

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Relying on trust and customercompany identification to motivate customers to pay extra Constant need to communicate the value of CSR projects

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Double Emphasis

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Relying on trust and customercompany identification Loyalty to highquality brand

For managers, Exhibit 2 provides guidance for the appropriate steps for designing and managing the corporate reputation strategy. First, it is important to assess the market conditions the company operates under: • Search goods versus experience/post experience goods. 8

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Economic upturn or downturn. Access to affluent and relatively price-insensitive customers.

This will determine the proper quadrant position for a company’s optimal reputational configuration. Next, a properly conducted customer survey can determine the actual state of its stakeholder relationships32 -- the current state of the company’s CSR and utilitarian reputation. If the company isn’t achieving its optimal position, the managers need specific guidance regarding the necessary corrective steps—for example, emphasizing and investing in the development of a particular reputational dimension or freeing resources that have limited marginal benefits.

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Finally, if the analysis reveals the need to improve one or both reputational dimensions, companies must use both traditional communication strategies and on-line communities to engage stakeholders.33 Engaged customers can serve as a crucial source of positive information about the company’s performance and its innovative ideas for product and service development. Such networks of stakeholders can become supportive constituencies,34 an asset that will become increasingly important in the “Web 2.0” world.

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“In the era of digital media and user-generated content on the Internet, the corporate system for fostering and maintaining its reputation is always on display and is always open to challenges by customers and other stakeholders.”

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“Reputational judgments can determine who will partner with a company, a crucial issue as ecosystems become essential to competitive advantage.”

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“The future may turn out to be “either 5-stars or 1-star” world, with Yelp and similar platforms critically disadvantaging the middle-ground of many markets, keeping only top performers and the ones whose business model is insensitive to reputational erosion.”

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“Poor reviews circulated via the Web, then becoming sensationalized by other media, could threaten the foundations of the conventional business models of “experience/post-experience goods” providers.” “Before jousting with complex social issues, the thoughtful cultivation of sophisticated capabilities could allow a [Social Emphasis or Double Emphasis] company to be more effective and efficient than its peers.” “The linkage of a firm’s corporate reputation and its business model, can be charted in a typology of approaches for reaping the rewards of corporate reputation.” 9


“Networks of stakeholders can become supportive constituencies, an asset that will become increasingly important in the “Web 2.0” world.”

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NOTES 1

Hietanen, J., & Rokka, J. (2015). “Market practices in countercultural market emergence,” European Journal of Marketing, 49(9/10), 1563-1588. 2

The comprehensive reviews of academic studies on the topic are presented in: Lange, D., Lee, P. M., & Dai, Y. (2011). “Organizational reputation: A review,” Journal of Management, 37(1), 153-184; Walker, K. (2010). “A systematic review of the corporate reputation literature: Definition, measurement, and theory,” Corporate Reputation Review, 12(4), 357-387; Barnett, M. L., Jermier, J. M., & Lafferty, B. A. (2006). “Corporate reputation: The definitional landscape,” Corporate Reputation Review, 9(1), 26-38.

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Keh, H. T., & Xie, Y. (2009). “Corporate reputation and customer behavioral intentions: The roles of trust, identification and commitment,” Industrial Marketing Management, 38(7), 732-742; Sen, S., & Bhattacharya, C. B. (2001). “Does doing good always lead to doing better? Consumer reactions to corporate social responsibility,” Journal of Marketing Research, 38(2), 225-243.

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Wei, J., Ouyang, Z., Chen, H. (2017). “Well‐known or well‐liked? The effects of corporate reputation on firm value at the onset of a corporate crisis,” Strategic Management Journal, forthcoming, DOI: 10.1002/smj.2639; Fombrun, C., (1996). Reputation. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.; Dierickx, I., & Cool, K. (1989). “Asset stock accumulation and sustainability of competitive advantage,” Management Science, 35(12), 1504-1511. 5

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For a review of academic literature on the topic, see e.g.: Agarwal, J., Osiyevskyy, O., & Feldman, P.M. (2015). “Corporate reputation measurement: alternative factor structures, nomological validity, and organizational outcomes,” Journal of Business Ethics, 130(2),485-506; Rindova, V.P., Williamson, I.O., Petkova, A.P. and Sever, J.M. (2005). “Being good or being known: An empirical examination of the dimensions, antecedents, and consequences of organizational reputation,” Academy of Management Journal, 48(6),1033-1049; Walker, K. & Dyck, B. (2014). “The primary importance of corporate social responsibility and ethicality in corporate reputation: an empirical study,” Business and Society Review, 119(1), 147-174.

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Petkova, A. P., Rindova, V. P., & Gupta, A. K. (2008). “How can new ventures build reputation? An exploratory study”, Corporate Reputation Review, 11(4), 320-334; Shane, S., & Cable, D. (2002). “Network ties, reputation, and the financing of new ventures,” Management Science, 48(3), 364-381.

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At its core, a business model is the system of a firm’s activities that allows it to serve its customers while ensuring that sufficient profit is generated for the stockholders. In academic literature, these two processes are referred to as value creation and appropriation (capture), see Zott, C., Amit, R. & Massa, L. (2011). “The business model: recent developments and future research,” Journal of Management, 37(4),1019-1042. The value-creation and value-appropriation functions of a business model are discussed in Osiyevskyy, O., & Dewald, J. (2015). “Explorative versus exploitative business model change: the cognitive antecedents of firm-level responses to disruptive innovation,” Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, 9(1), 58-78; Zott, C.,& Amit, R. (2010). “Business model design: an activity system perspective,” Long Range Planning, 43(2), 216226.

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Lange, D., Lee, P. M., & Dai, Y. (2011).”Organizational reputation: A review,” Journal of Management, 37(1), 153-184. 9

See the recent review on the topic of dimensionality in: Agarwal, J., Stackhouse, M., & Osiyevskyy, O. (2017). “I love that company: Look how ethical, prominent, and efficacious it is—a triadic organizational reputation (TOR) scale,” Journal of Business Ethics, forthcoming, DOI: 10.1007/s10551-016-3421-2.

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The academic literature distinguishes among more dimensions (see the discussion in Agarwal et al., 2015, 2017, Ibid). Yet, ultimately all dimensions can be subsumed under these two broad categories: the one directly related to a focal stakeholder’s utilitarian considerations, and the one related to overall benevolence and fair treatment of all stakeholders. Agarwal et al., (2017), Ibid

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Agarwal et al., (2017), Ibid

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See The Guardian (2014), "Apple under fire again for working conditions at Chinese factories,” December 19, 2014; Malone, A., & Jones, R (2010), "Revealed: Inside the Chinese suicide sweatshop where workers toil in 34-hour shifts to make your iPod," Daily Mail, December 6, 2010. Jamieson, D. (2014). “The Factory Workers Behind Your iPhone Are Too Tired To Eat, Report Says.” The Huffington Post, December 23, 2014.

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Cabral, L. M. B. (2000). Introduction to Industrial Organization (Massachusetts Institute of Technology.). 12

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Aula, P. (2010). “Social media, reputation risk and ambient publicity management,” Strategy & Leadership, 38(6), 43-49. 16

See the early investigation on the topic in: Grabner-Kräuter, S., & Waiguny, M. K. (2015). “Insights into the impact of online physician reviews on patients’ decision making: randomized experiment,” Journal of Medical Internet Research, 17(4), e93; Lagu, T., Hannon, N. S., Rothberg, M. B., & Lindenauer, P. K. (2010). “Patients’ evaluations of health care providers in the era of social networking: an analysis of physician-rating websites,” Journal of General Internal Medicine, 25(9), 942-946.

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Walmart, “ Walmart Annual Report, Form 10-K” January 31, 2016

Hyde, R. (2015), “How Walmart Model Wins with ‘Everyday Low Prices’”, investopedia.com, January 18, 2015; De Blasio, B. (2013),“New Report: WalMart Destroys Local Economy,” PopularResistance.org, August 14, 2013. 19

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McArdle, M. (2015) “Why Wal-Mart is Raising Its Everyday Low Wages,” Bloombergview.com, February 19, 2015; Associated Press (2012), “Again? WalMart’s Reputation takes another beating,” chron.com, May 12, 2012.

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Dish Network, “Dish Network Annual Report, Form 10-K,” December 31, 2015

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Kline, D.B. (2014) “Dish Network Continues to Make Money Despite Customer and Employee Hatred,” Jan 28, 2014, The Motley Fool. 22

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Kline, D.B. (2014), Ibid.

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Monsanto, “ Monsanto Annual Report, Form 10-K,” Aug. 31, 2016; J. Leslie Glick “Biotech Firms Need Innovation strategies,” Sept 1, 2015, genengnews.com 24

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“Awards and Recognition,” accessed Oct 19, 2015, monsanto.com; “Monsanto Named by Fortune magazine as One of the World’s Most Admired Companies,” February 19, 2015, Monsanto.com 25

Charles, D. (2012), “Top Five Myths of Generically Modified Seeds, Busted,” npr.org, October 18, 2012; Parker, C. (2013), “How Monsanto is Terrifying the Farming World,” miaminewtimes.com, July 25, 2013; Organic Consumers

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Association (2015), “Health and Environmental Impacts of Monsanto’s Roundup Pesticide,” Oct 20, 2015. 26

Goldman Sachs “Goldman Sachs Annual Report, Form 10-K,”December 31, 2015 27

Sauter, M. & Frohlich, T. (2015), “Companies With the Best (and Worst) Reputations,” 247wallst.com, May 6, 2015. 28

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Global Finance (2012), “World’s Best Investment Bank 2012,,” February 20, 2012, gfmag.com. 29 30

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The Economist (2016), “Investment Banks: Too squid to fail,” Oct/29, 2016.

See, e.g., Bear, J. & Light, J. (2014), “Goldman Sachs Settles FHFA Lawsuit for About $1.2 Billion,” The Wall Street Journal, August, 22, 2014.

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Husted, B. W., & de Jesus Salazar, J. (2006), "Taking Friedman Seriously: Maximizing Profits and Social Performance,” Journal of Management Studies, 43 (1), 75-91.

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See, e.g., Agarwal et al., (2017), Ibid, for a survey tool and an example of study design to assess different dimensions of corporate reputation 33

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Dijkmans, C., Kerkhof, P., & Beukeboom, C. J. (2015). “A stage to engage: Social media use and corporate reputation,” Tourism Management, 47, 58-67. 34

Floreddu, P. B., Cabiddu, F., & Evaristo, R. (2014). “Inside your social media ring: How to optimize online corporate reputation,” Business Horizons, 57(6), 737-745.

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