Strategic management research often treats reputation as a macro-level attribute, leaving undertheorized the cognitive linkages through which it shapes stakeholder judgments. We examine an alternative account in which reputation operates as an intermediate interpretive frame that shapes individuals’ competence beliefs and, through them, behavioral intentions. Using a repeated-measures experiment and a field study, we find that reputation operates both directly, as a heuristic influencing willingness to pay and loyalty, and indirectly, by shaping competence inferences. Following alleged wrongdoing, however, both functions collapse. Although some repair strategies partially reactivate reputation’s indirect framing role, its direct heuristic function does not return, and recovery remains incomplete. We recast reputation as a fragile and conditional cognitive frame whose value depends on the credibility of the competence inferences it supports.
Organizational reputations of public and non-profit entities are dynamic and multidimensional phenomena that vary across different audience groups, creating a challenging environment for administrators. We conducted 82 in-depth interviews with top-level decision-makers in collegiate athletics to better understand reputational issues during times of field-wide volatility. Results highlighted the importance of mission valence as an important but overlooked reputational dimension. Environmental volatility drove agencies to emphasize outcome-oriented dimensions rather than process, and short- rather than long-term reputational goals. We identified the centrality of peer audiences from other agencies, an audience that defies the traditional internal/external dichotomization of reputation. Our findings show how, in a landscape of interdependent agencies, shifting goals and norms illustrate the complexity of reputation management for the public administrator.
Master of Business Administration (MBA) program rankings have become a dominant signal of business schools’ quality, yet limited empirical research has explored the strategic antecedents that predict the performance in these rankings. The study addresses this gap by applying Fombrun’s corporate reputation framework to identify the drivers of full-time MBA program rankings. Drawing on a dataset of top MBA programs from the QS 2020 rankings supplemented with corresponding institutional characteristics, we empirically test a model linking institutional environment, organizational symbolism, strategic issues, and organizational strategy to ranking outcomes. The main results suggest that the host institution (university) ranking, regional competition, and program-level product differentiation are positively associated with MBA program rankings, while program diversification through non-MBA degrees is negatively associated. Our findings underscore the strategic choices within the control of business school leaders that shape reputational standing, offering implications for resource allocation, program design, and institutional positioning. Furthermore, by extending a corporate reputation lens to the higher education sector’s rankings context, this study contributes to strategy and reputation literature.
This study examines how an international expert panel assessed and refined a literature-derived conceptualisation of university reputation, focusing on construct boundaries, stakeholder importance, contested management assumptions and preliminary governance implications. A two-round Delphi consultation was conducted in 2021 with 21 experts from 13 countries and four professional profiles, combining 1–7 ratings, stakeholder rankings and open responses. Agreement, dispersion and stability are reported descriptively using item-specific denominators. Experts supported the revised working definition and most institutional, stakeholder and contextual elements, but their comments challenged treating these as equivalent parts of reputation. The revised account separates institutional antecedents and signals from stakeholder-specific evaluation and subsequent outcomes. Stakeholder rankings were highly stable in the matched 19-participant comparison (Spearman ρ = 0.999), whereas views on ‘reputation management’ showed persistent dispersion. Governance implications were positively rated but remain preliminary and causally indeterminate. The article uses Delphi evidence to move from a literature-derived taxonomy to an expert-informed process model, clarifying the distinct roles of institutional antecedents, signals, stakeholder evaluators, context, reputational evaluation, outcomes and feedback. Universities should focus on institutional quality, conduct, stakeholder experience and credible signals rather than assume that stakeholder evaluations can be controlled directly. Relative to the authors’ 2025 systematic review, the study contributes a transparent expert stress-test of the literature-derived framework, showing which elements were retained, refined, reclassified or contested and using those patterns to motivate a post-Delphi process specification. The expert panel was not a representative stakeholder sample, no a priori numerical consensus criterion was used, and the proposed process relationships require subsequent empirical testing.
This paper introduces the concept of evaluative context and argues that corporate reputation cannot be properly conceptualized without it. The literature has made notable progress in disentangling how reputation is formed, who judges, and the consequences that follow from that evaluation. At the same time, it has left out of the spotlight the fact that the criteria stakeholders use to assess organizations change over time: they are historically contingent, socially constructed, and continuously evolving. Ignoring this makes any true comparison of reputation across different points in time very difficult, if not impossible. What built reputation a decade ago may be irrelevant today, and criteria mostly invisible to stakeholders yesterday can become salient and robust reputational factors tomorrow. The implications run from how reputation is measured to how it is conceptualized. Drawing on an integrative review of over four decades of reputation scholarship, institutional theory, legitimacy theory, and the sociology of expectations, we develop the Evaluative Context Model of Corporate Reputation (ECMCR). In this model, reputation emerges from three interacting layers. Organizations emit signals, stakeholders evaluate them, and both processes unfold within the evaluative context, the historically situated and socially negotiated set of criteria that determines what counts as reputationally relevant at any given time. The main implication is that the structure of reputation, not only its outcomes, changes over time as evaluative criteria evolve. We develop seven formal propositions, discuss theoretical and practical implications, and outline a research agenda.
