Reputation‐Sets

• Author: Barry M. Mitnick,Richard A. McGowan,John F. Mahon
• Published date: 01 February 2020
• Date: 01 February 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2062

ACADEMIC PAPER

Reputation-Sets

Barry M. Mitnick

1

| John F. Mahon

2

| Richard A. McGowan

3

1

Katz Graduate School of Business, University

of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

2

Maine Business School, University of Maine,

Orono, Maine

3

Wallace E. Carroll School of Management,

Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

Correspondence

John F. Mahon, Maine Business School,

University of Maine, 5723 Corbett Business

Bldg., Orono, ME 04469-5723, USA.

Email: mahon@maine.edu

This paper introduces the concept of reputation-set, identifies and discusses two

major bases for reputation that characterize such sets, specifying ascription-sets and

achievement-sets, and proposes a series of theoretical propositions about the func-

tioning of reputation-sets. In addition, we introduce the concept of reputation maps,

which are heuristic depictions of the central variables in reputation-set management,

and provide a means to track and assist in management of such sets. The growth of

social media outlets (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram) has accelerated attacks

on reputation, and the speed with which such attacks can be launched. This requires

a more systematic understanding of the structure and functioning of reputational

systems and, in particular, of reputation-sets.

1|INTRODUCTION

Research and practitioner interest in reputation has grown rapidly in

recent years. The literature focused on reputation has shown impres-

sive expansion (see, e.g., the works of Barnett, Jermier, & Lafferty,

2006; Barnett & Pollock, 2012; Bevan, Evans, & Nuti, 2019; Eccles,

Newquist, & Schatz, 2007; Fombrun, 1996; 1997; Fombrun &

Shanley, 1990; Gotsi & Wilson, 2001; Kelley & Thams, 2019;

Newburry, Deephouse & Gardberg, 2019; Lee, Lim, & Drumwright,

2018; Mitnick & Mahon, 2007; Mahon & Mitnick, 2010; Mason,

2019; Pérez-Cornejo et al., 2018; Pollock et al., 2019; Ravasi et al.,

2018; Vock, Ward, & Campbell, 2018; and the establishment of Cor-

porate Reputation Review as an outlet for this research). This level of

activity has had rippling effects on research in related as well as more

encompassing fields. Mainline strategy scholars have taken up reputa-

tion as a central component of analysis, looking at reputation as an

“intangible”asset within the resource view of the firm framework

(Barney, 1991; Barney, Wright, & Ketchen, 2001; Hall, 1992; Prabhu &

Stewart, 2001; and Weigelt & Camerer, 1988).

Even within the business and society literature reputation has

achieved significant visibility (Brammer & Pavelin, 2004; Mahon,

2002; Wartick, 2002) with an entire issue of the field's top journal

devoted to the topic (see Business and Society, volume 41, number

4, December 2002). In her introduction to the volume, the journal's

editor notes that “…an organization's reputation is assuming greater

significance in this period of intense criticism of business behavior”

(Logsdon, 2002:363). Logsdon & Wood, the symposium editors,

observe that “We wondered whether reputation is a relevant and use-

ful construct to integrate more explicitly into theories about

business and society relationships”(2002:365).

Two of the central and challenging problems in reputation

research are the definition of reputation and the question of how rep-

utation is managed with respect to the stakeholders of the organiza-

tion (Barnett et al., 2006; Kraatz & Love, 2006). Indeed, one of the

conceptual problems that must be addressed in order to examine rep-

utation and stakeholder management is the problem of aggregation:

whether reputation should be viewed most usefully as some aggre-

gated status or perception, or whether it should be modeled descrip-

tively as some distributed set of perceptions held by participating

actors, that is, as a single, collapsed perceptual entity, or as several

separate entities. In other words, how shall we model and/or map rep-

utational fields (on fields, see Fligstein & McAdam, 2012).

A central purpose of thispaper is to address this question of repu-

tation and aggregation. In order to deal with the reputational aggrega-

tion issue, we suggest and will explore in this analysis the use of what

we call reputation-sets: the sets of observers of the firm who have

descriptive affectstoward it, holding issue or performance quality con-

stant. Reputation-sets constitute an intermediate point between an

individual reputational assessment and the net reputational assess-

ments of all constituentsor stakeholders of an organization or subsets

of stakeholders.Reputation-sets can be based upon naturaloverlapping

interests—forexample, those stakeholders concerned with the financial

performance of the organization could be reasonably aggregated

(Gertsen, van Riel, & Berens, 2006; Mahon & Wartick, 2012; Mazzola,

[Correction added on 29 February 2020 after first online publication: The author's biography,

Table 1, the reference list and other typographical errors have been corrected in this version.]

Received: 21 November 2019 Accepted: 21 November 2019

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2062

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