Research On Corporate Attributes, Corporate Reputation And Corporate Performance Based On The Attitude Theory

Current research mainly focuses on the development of the corporate reputation scales, or the relationships between corporate reputation and other constructs. More and more the amounts of different scales of the corporate reputation, but the similar research often obtain different conclusions, even the contrary result. The reason sources mainly from the scare of the concept framework of corporate reputation. This research tries to develop the concept framework of corporate reputation.We begin with our study from the definition of corporate reputation. Only there is a clear concept of a construct, we can continue to measure it. Through the surveying of the literatures, we define the corporate reputation as attitude structure, which includes the competence dimension and affection dimension. We found a lots of research use the attitude as the definition of corporate reputation, but few people answer why the attitude? Where is the attitude from? According to the attitude theory in psychology, we found the concept framework of attitude, it is belief attitude intention, which can be used as clue of stakeholders in our research. Corresponding to the clue of the corporation, we obtain the framework: corporate attribute corporate reputation corporate performance, which is the foundation of our research. Combining the two clues of stakeholder and corporation with the attitude structure of corporate reputation, we found the combo that can express the corporate reputation theory. The concept framework we source from attitude theory can integrate other research of corporate measurement and management.According to the former framework that we have constructed, the corporate attributes are the drivers of corporate reputation. We used the corporate attributes as the foundation to explore the detailed contents of corporate attributes which takes the important roles in the forming of the corporate reputation. In the course of the surveying the literatures of corporate attributes, we sorted them in terms of demology, the first are elementary attributes, such as corporate size, corporate age etc. The second sets are general attributes, such as corporate performance and corporate governance etc. the last is differential attributes, just like the level of globalization of corporation. The difference between the first and the second sort lie in whether there is the value judgment. The first sort doesn't include the course of value judgment and the second does. We mainly search the antecedents of corporate reputation in the second set. According to the attitude theory, competence related with the knowledge and skill tightly. Affection includes the moral feeling, rational feeling and aesthetic feeling. Combing the knowledge of attitude theory about competence and affection with the surveying of corporate attributes, we believe the quality of product and status of corporate operation will affect the competence. Pulsing the other three corporate attributes, attraction, quality of service and social responsibility, the five attributes will drive the corporate affection together. Through the analysis of the former contents, we develop the body of our research framework. Empirical results support our theory expectation. The quality of product and the status of operation affect the competence dimension of corporate reputation significantly, and all the five attributes affect the affection dimension of corporate reputation significantly. To the competence, the operation takes the most important role, while the social responsibility is the key one in the forming of affection. We also found, the quality of product is important in both the forming of competence and the affection.We also analyze the moderating role of source of information and the propensity to tolerance in the relationships of corporate attributes and corporate reputation. Empirical results support parts of our hypothesis about the moderating roles. The source of information moderates the relations between the product quality and competence, relations between the product quality and affection, relations between service quality and the affection. Propensity to tolerance moderates all our relation in the framework except the relations between the status of operation and the affection, relation between social responsibility and affection. All these can improve our knowledge on the mechanism between the corporate attributes and corporate reputation.