Reputation of multinational companies: corporate social responsibility and internationalization.
Identificadores
URI: https://hdl.handle.net/10481/88953Metadatos
Afficher la notice complèteMateria
Reputation Stakeholder theory Corporate social responsibility International diversification Multinational companies
Date
2017Referencia bibliográfica
Aguilera-Caracuel, J., Guerrero-Villegas, J., & García-Sánchez, E. (2017). Reputation of multinational companies: Corporate social responsibility and internationalization. European Journal of Management and Business Economics, 26(3), 329-346. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EJMBE-10-2017-019
Patrocinador
This research has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (Research Projects ECO2013-47009-P and ECO2016-75909-P), the Regional Government of Andalusia (Excellence Research Project P11-SEJ-7988) and the Business and Economics School of the University of Granada (Programa de ayudas para la revisión de textos científicos). The authors thank members of ISDE research group and members of the Management and Marketing Department of Pablo de Olavide University for their insightful recommendations. Finally, the authors really thank the two anonymous reviewers of this paper for their excellent suggestions and comments.Résumé
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to use stakeholder theory as the theoretical reference framework to study the influence of internationalization (geographic international diversification) and social performance on multinational companies’ (MNCs) reputation.
Design/methodology/approach – The authors confirm the research hypotheses using a sample of 113 US MNCs in the chemical, energy and industrial machinery sectors during the period 2005-2010.
Findings – This study contributes to the literature in three ways. First, it incorporates literature on internationalization to study the possible connection between geographic international diversification and social performance in MNCs. Second, it sheds light on the debate between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the reputation of MNCs in a very diverse transnational context in which MNCs must meet the needs of stakeholders at both local and global levels. Third, it incorporates the mediating role of social performance in the relationship between geographic international diversification and the firm’s reputation.
Originality/value – Prior studies have hardly analyzed this relationship, which becomes especially relevant for MNCs, since their implementation of advanced CSR practices in the different markets in which the operate will gain them a good reputation, not only in specific local contexts but also globally, benefitting the organization as a whole and enabling it to gain internal consistency (improvement in internal efficiency), transparency and legitimacy.