The Institutionalization of Corporate Reputation

The management literatures on institutionalism and corporate reputation have accumulated rapidly since the 1980s. The literatures on corporate reputation and institutional theory have grown together over the last 30 years as organizational environments have become increasingly complex, competitive, and global. This chapter identifies the major concepts and areas of work in institutionalism including legitimacy rational myths, isomorphism and the development of institutional fields, institutional logics, institutional work and entrepreneurship, and the processes of institutionalization and deinstitutionalization. For each of these areas, the chapter reviews representative research on corporate reputation, and discusses the implications in each area of viewing corporate reputation as an institutional message. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the extent to which the business of corporate reputation itself has become institutionalized.