Table 1 Comparative overview of... | Emerald Publishing

Table 1

Comparative overview of corporate reputation definitions in the literature

Author(s) and year	Definitions
Spence (1974)	“Corporate reputation is the outcome of a competitive process in which firms signal their key characteristics to constituents to maximize their social status”
Alvesson (1990)	“Reputation refers to a holistic and vivid impression held by a particular group towards a corporation, partly as a result of information processing (sense-making) carried out by the group’s members and partly by the aggregated communication of the corporation in question concerning its nature, i.e. the fabricated and projected picture of itself”
Fombrun (1996)	“A corporate reputation is a perceptual representation of a company’s past actions and future prospects that describes the firm’s overall appeal to all of its key constituents when compared with other leading rivals”
Fombrun and van Riel (1997)	“A collective representation of a firm’s past actions and results that describes the firm’s ability to deliver valued outcomes to multiple stakeholders. It gauges a firm’s relative standing both internally with employees and externally with its stakeholders, in both its competitive and institutional environments”
Post and Griffin (1997)	“Corporate reputation is a synthesis of the opinions, perceptions and attitudes of an organization’s stakeholders, employees, customers, suppliers, investors, community members, activists, media and other stakeholders”
Andersen and Sørensen (1999)	“A reputation can be defined as a bundle of attributes and the interrelationships among them, shared among a group of individuals in a socio-cognitive community”
Cable and Graham (2000)	“A public’s affective evaluation of a firm’s name relative to other firms”
Deephouse (2000)	“The evaluation of a firm by its stakeholders in terms of their effect, esteem and knowledge”
Ferguson et al. (2000)	“In essence, reputation reflects what stakeholders think and feel about a firm”
Whetten and Mackey (2002)	“Reputation is a particular type of feedback, received by an organization from its stakeholders”
Rindova et al. (2005)	“Stakeholders’ perceptions about an organization’s ability to create value relative to competitors”
Barnett et al. (2006)	“Observer’s collective judgments of a corporation based on assessments of the financial, social and environmental impacts attributed to the corporation over time”
Carter (2006)	“A set of key characteristics attributed to a firm by various stakeholders”
Van Riel and Fombrun (2007)	“Reputations are overall assessments of organizations by their stakeholders. They are aggregate perceptions by stakeholders of an organization’s ability to fulfill their expectations, whether these stakeholders are interested in buying the company’s products, working for the company or investing in the company’s shares”
Boivie et al. (2016)	“We define reputation as a collective social judgment regarding the quality or capabilities of a focal actor within a specific domain…”
Veh et al. (2019)	“We recommend focusing on corporate reputation as an attitudinal concept and thereby emphasizing the stakeholder who acts as an evaluator of the corporation”

Author(s) and year	Definitions
Spence (1974)	“Corporate reputation is the outcome of a competitive process in which firms signal their key characteristics to constituents to maximize their social status”
Alvesson (1990)	“Reputation refers to a holistic and vivid impression held by a particular group towards a corporation, partly as a result of information processing (sense-making) carried out by the group’s members and partly by the aggregated communication of the corporation in question concerning its nature, i.e. the fabricated and projected picture of itself”
Fombrun (1996)	“A corporate reputation is a perceptual representation of a company’s past actions and future prospects that describes the firm’s overall appeal to all of its key constituents when compared with other leading rivals”
Fombrun and van Riel (1997)	“A collective representation of a firm’s past actions and results that describes the firm’s ability to deliver valued outcomes to multiple stakeholders. It gauges a firm’s relative standing both internally with employees and externally with its stakeholders, in both its competitive and institutional environments”
Post and Griffin (1997)	“Corporate reputation is a synthesis of the opinions, perceptions and attitudes of an organization’s stakeholders, employees, customers, suppliers, investors, community members, activists, media and other stakeholders”
Andersen and Sørensen (1999)	“A reputation can be defined as a bundle of attributes and the interrelationships among them, shared among a group of individuals in a socio-cognitive community”
Cable and Graham (2000)	“A public’s affective evaluation of a firm’s name relative to other firms”
Deephouse (2000)	“The evaluation of a firm by its stakeholders in terms of their effect, esteem and knowledge”
Ferguson et al. (2000)	“In essence, reputation reflects what stakeholders think and feel about a firm”
Whetten and Mackey (2002)	“Reputation is a particular type of feedback, received by an organization from its stakeholders”
Rindova et al. (2005)	“Stakeholders’ perceptions about an organization’s ability to create value relative to competitors”
Barnett et al. (2006)	“Observer’s collective judgments of a corporation based on assessments of the financial, social and environmental impacts attributed to the corporation over time”
Carter (2006)	“A set of key characteristics attributed to a firm by various stakeholders”
Van Riel and Fombrun (2007)	“Reputations are overall assessments of organizations by their stakeholders. They are aggregate perceptions by stakeholders of an organization’s ability to fulfill their expectations, whether these stakeholders are interested in buying the company’s products, working for the company or investing in the company’s shares”
Boivie et al. (2016)	“We define reputation as a collective social judgment regarding the quality or capabilities of a focal actor within a specific domain…”
Veh et al. (2019)	“We recommend focusing on corporate reputation as an attitudinal concept and thereby emphasizing the stakeholder who acts as an evaluator of the corporation”