Skip to main content
Strategic Management JournalVolume 35, Issue 4, April 2014, Pages 532-549

Weak links and the management of reputational interdependencies(Article)

  Save all to author list
  • Faculty of Economics and Management, University of Strasbourg, 61, avenue de la Forêt Noire, 67085 Strasbourg Cedex, France

Abstract

This paper builds on a growing literature that takes into account the fact that firms in an industry may be interdependent with regard to their corporate reputations, thus sharing a "reputation commons." We argue that the theory of public goods can help us to understand the interdependencies that link corporate reputations and to frame the contexts and requirements for collective action that they induce. In particular, we suggest that more and more frequently these interdependencies make industry reputation a "weak link" public good. We show that this raises new challenges for the strategic management of industry reputation by communities of firms. The discussion of these challenges is based on the case study of the collective action of the European chlorine companies towards restoring their reputation after being accused of not being safe, and on a model of the production of reputation by companies. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Author keywords

collective actionindustry commonspublic goodsreputationstakeholdersweak link

Indexed keywords

Engineering controlled terms:ManagementPlanning
Engineering uncontrolled termsCollective actionPublic goodsreputationstakeholdersWeak links
Engineering main heading:Industry
  • ISSN: 01432095
  • CODEN: SMAJD
  • Source Type: Journal
  • Original language: English
  • DOI: 10.1002/smj.2122
  • Document Type: Article
  • Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Ltd

  Fauchart, E.; Faculty of Economics and Management, University of Strasbourg, 61, avenue de la Forêt Noire, France;
© Copyright 2014 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

Cited by 14 documents

Peredo, A.M. , Haugh, H.M. , Hudon, M.
Mapping Concepts and Issues in the Ethics of the Commons: Introduction to the Special Issue
(2020) Journal of Business Ethics
Lee, S.H. , Mellahi, K. , Mol, M.J.
No-Size-Fits-All: Collaborative Governance as an Alternative for Addressing Labour Issues in Global Supply Chains
(2020) Journal of Business Ethics
Peillex, J. , Comyns, B.
Why do financial companies adopt the United Nations Principles for responsible investment? | Pourquoi les sociétés financières décident-elles d'adopter les principes des nations unies pour l'investissement responsable ?
(2020) Comptabilite Controle Audit
View details of all 14 citations
{"topic":{"name":"Corporate Reputation; Brand Management; Reputational Risk","id":5957,"uri":"Topic/5957","prominencePercentile":95.97064,"prominencePercentileString":"95.971","overallScholarlyOutput":0},"dig":"8a2a6214405a98ff4d32a9d1c154b30564dba07a3ca17fe6e373cf6f7a728233"}

SciVal Topic Prominence

Topic:
Prominence percentile: