Graduation Semester and Year

2017

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Management

Department

Management

First Advisor

George S Benson

Abstract

Corporate reputation scholars largely agree that reputation is an asset related to the competitive advantage of firms. However, there is far from universal agreement about whether corporate reputation is best characterized as a single, global assessment that is common to all stakeholders, or as many assessments made by different stakeholder groups. Scholars developing corporate reputation theory have recently focused on the idiosyncratic expectations of different stakeholders, and the consequences of meeting or failing to meet those expectations. This dissertation extends this analysis to employee stakeholders by drawing on social exchange and instrumental stakeholder theory frameworks to develop hypotheses around 1.) the differential effects of employer versus overall reputation on organizational outcomes and 2.) potential consequences for organizations that have different levels of employer and overall reputation. I use labor productivity as a more direct outcome associated with supportive employee behavior and financial returns as a more distal outcome. Further, I build theory on the moderating conditions of these effects across industries that differ in terms of capital intensity, research and development intensity, and advertising intensity. My contribution lies in testing theory that reputation's value as an asset depends on how it addresses stakeholders' concerns, which vary according to their unique relationship with the organization, and in testing moderating industry conditions of this theory. This paper uses a common data source to represent overall reputation (Fortune's Most Admired Companies) and secondary data in the form of online reviews to represent employer reputation (Glassdoor.com). I find support for the idea that overall and employer reputation are distinct constructs with unique effects on labor productivity and financial returns. I also find some support for my theory that the effects of employer and overall reputation depend on each other. The implications of these findings for the research literature on organizational reputation are discussed along with the managerial importance of employer reputation.

Keywords

employer reputation, labor productivity, corporate reputation, organizational performance, industry context

Disciplines

Business | Business Administration, Management, and Operations

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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