Even When No One Is Watching: The Moral Psychology of Corporate Reputation

The most popular measure of corporate reputation is the ranking of the most admired companies. But what exactly do we admire in people and firms of good reputation? This article is about the ethical dimension of corporate reputation. It integrates the trait approach in personality psychology and philosophical ethics to the study of reputation and related concepts as a way to account for the discontinuities between reputation at the individual and corporate levels under conditions of uncertainty. Through an examination of the distinction between perceptions and grounding of reputation, the article also sheds light on the explanatory power of reputation concepts and critically appraises the possibility of character and organizational virtue