DEFINING CORPORATE REPUTATION

Corporate reputation is a relatively new construct in management research. While in the past businesses were almost exclusively driven by what is referred to as the ‘marketing model’, in recent years, also due to the emergence of knowledge-intensive products and to the rise of the knowledge economy, a 30-second advert cannot easily communicate the inherent value of such products – hence, reputation has become more important in creating value for a business (Scott and Walsham, 2005). Moreover, due to the spread of social media, improved geographical connectivity has made it easier for events happening in one part of the world to be almost instantly known all around the globe, thus making the reputational risk more difficult to manage for corporations (Qualman, 2009). Although it can be suspected that people tend to sacrifice values for price when in a situation of economic depression and so things like corporate social responsibility issues might seem to get ignored, according to Page and Fearn (2005) it has become commonly accepted that consumers’ buying decisions are affected by organisations’ reputation.