Corporate reputation in management research a review of the literature and assessment of the concept

摘要

The study of reputation figures prominently in management research, yetthe increasing number of publications makes it difficult to keep track of this growingbody of literature. This paper provides a systematic review of the literature based ona large-scale bibliometric analysis. We draw on bibliographic data of 5885 publications published until 2016, inclusively, and combine co-citation analysis andbibliographic coupling with network visualization. Results show how research oncorporate reputation is embedded in the broader field of scholarship on reputation ingeneral. When zooming into the publication cluster on corporate reputation moreclosely, the concept’s origins in economics, organizational studies, and marketing aswell as corresponding theoretical and methodological discussions are revealed.Beyond providing a structured overview of the field, the bibliometric analyses alsoreveal conceptual incoherencies that lead to ambiguities in research. Our assessmentbuilds on the philosophy of science and is guided by the criteria of good concepts insocial sciences. It shows that the concept of corporate reputation lacks internalcoherence and could have more theoretical utility. We recommend focusing oncorporate reputation as an attitudinal concept and thereby emphasizing the stakeholder who acts as an evaluator of the corporation.