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One of the hallmarks of strategizing is having a clearly articulated vision and mission for the organization. It has been suggested that this provides a compass bearing for the organization's strategy, helps in motivation, commitment and retention of employees, serves as a guide to internal sensemaking and decision-making, has a potential performance effect, helps establish the identity of the organization and positions its desired reputation. The compass bearing role is important because it guides the selection of the goals and strategic orientation of the organization which in turn shapes its overall strategy and much of its internal decision making. The inspirational role is important because it helps to motivate and engage employees and other stakeholders.

This study provides a more rigorous indication as to whether employees can, in the first instance, recognize and distinguish their corporate and environmental strategy from that of their competitors within their own industry and random other companies from other industries. This first issue addresses, to a degree, if and why, such strategic communiqués are effective inside a range of different organizations. Secondly, the authors examine whether there are any specific individual level effects that could explain variations in these responses. Finally, the authors examine the extent to which the recognition rates the authors observe, relate to how employees are rewarded through appraisals, promotions and salary increases. This helps in the authors’ understanding of the role of hard incentives versus soft motivations. The authors’ approach to assessing employee knowledge of their organization's strategy is unique. Rather than survey employees about their knowledge, the authors use a matching study and a discrete choice measurement model to assess if they can recognize their organization's strategy from those of their competitors and some other randomly selected organizations. This approach allows us to mitigate social desirability and common method biases and directly estimate the underlying behavioral model being used to assess their organization's strategy.

Overall, the authors found that few employees could correctly identify their corporate strategy statements. In the case of corporate strategy statements, the authors find that, on average, only 29 percent of employees could correctly match their company to its publicly espoused corporate strategy. When the authors look at the environmental sustainability strategy of the firm, this is worse overall, with individuals doing no better than random on average. When the authors look at company training and communication practices across the realm of different strategies, the authors see a number of factors leading to the general results. First, most of the authors’ respondents could not recall a significant effort being given to communication and training by their employer. Indeed, most communication/training is simply related to having documentation/brochures available. Second, respondents indicated that more effort is put into communicating corporate strategy to employees in a more systematic manner than communication about environmental/corporate social responsible (CSR) strategy. Third, the authors see that individuals are evaluated more on and give more weight to, evaluations relating to their ability to meet individual/group financial and market performance metrics (targets) and work as a team than their involvement in environmental and social responsibility programs. Finally, the employees studied seemed to be more confident in understanding the corporate strategy. When asked to put their corporate strategy into words – a task the authors asked respondents to do after the matching phase of the study – 40% of participants did so for the corporate strategy but only 14% did so for the environmental strategy and seven percent for the CSR strategy.

The primary implication of the study is that the values-mission-strategy logic of strategic motivation seems to have limited validity and with respect to the view that employees are a vector of corporate strategy. It is hard to argue that employees can be a vector for something they cannot recall or even distinguish between.

The study is unique in terms of (1) asking the very simple question of whether employees internalize their company's strategies and (2) in the methodological approach to examine employee knowledge and informativeness.

The glass ceiling is a metaphor used to characterize the gender inequality of women at the top in most large western organizations. This situation has prompted many business organizations, NGOs and governments to encourage large organizations to promote more women into the executive suite and onto boards of directors. While there is little controversy about this initiative, this paper argues that there should be because it directly challenges the principle that merit should outweigh diversity. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper reviews research that purports to show that women are unfairly under-represented in the most senior positions in large western organizations. It also reviews the arguments that more senior women would improve the performance of these organizations. This research is then used to develop a model of why there are markedly fewer women than men at the top of large organizations.

This study finds that most of the research studies purporting to show that there is a bias against promoting women to the top of large western organizations are unsound because they are poorly designed and/or fail to accommodate alternative explanations for this effect. Thus, the current number of women who run these organizations may be a good reflection of their contribution to the management of these organizations. These findings suggest that many of the policies that are promoted to help women break through the glass ceiling are misguided.

Large organizations should think carefully about following the advice of special interest groups who vigorously promote this social cause.

Social policy advocates need better research from which to advance their cause that there are currently too few women in senior management positions of large organizations.

This is one of only a handful of papers that challenges the current orthodoxy that artificial glass ceilings are restricting the potential contribution of women to the better management of large organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to outline a theory-based approach to defining the corporate reputation construct.

The approach taken is to describe how to create a well-formed nominal definition of a construct and then show how this definition is translated into an operational definition that guides the selection of an appropriate measure. New definitions of corporate social reputation and appropriate measures of this construct are provided to illustrate this framework.

The definitional framework used suggests that many measures of corporate social responsibility and reputation are under specified. Thus, the measures derived from these definitions are poorly constructed. The strengths and weaknesses of three new types of measure of corporate social reputation are reviewed.

For scholars the advantages of creating a well-formed definition are that it will lead to a valid measure of the construct under investigation. This will then help to better interpret what are significant findings and non-findings of empirical research.

This paper is an extension of the author’s previous work on defining the corporate reputation construct. Because what is meant by corporate social responsibility is contested amongst scholars this and related constructs need more precise definition and measurement. This paper offers a theory-based approach to achieve this aim.

Socially responsible investment (SRI) funds have grown dramatically as an investment alternative in most of the developed world. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This study uses a structured experimental approach to determine if the decision-making process of investors to invest in SRIs is consistent with the process used for conventional investments. The theoretical framework draws on two widely studied concepts in the decision making and investment literature, namely, inertia and discounting.

The authors find that inertia plays a significant role in the selection of SRI funds and that investors systemically discount the value of SRIs.

The results suggest that SRIs need to be designed to cater to the risk/return profiles of investors and that these investors need to be better informed about the performance of SRIs vs conventional investments to reduce their systematic discounting.

Unique experimental approach applied to investment alternatives in a manner that captures individual level variation.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the major sources of risk to a company's reputation that a board of directors should take responsibility for monitoring.

The paper looks at numerous corporate scandals around the world in the last decade which have highlighted that many boards of directors were unaware of some deep‐seated problems in their companies. Thus, their lack of diligence contributed in part to their company's loss of reputation.

The paper finds that when a board of directors takes formal responsibility for the overall health of its company's reputation, two things generally happen. One is that the various board sub‐committees look for the impact on corporate reputation of their decisions. The other is that corporate reputation becomes a key performance indicator of the company's executive management team.

This paper acts as a “call to arms” to boards of directors to put corporate reputation on the formal corporate governance agenda. The significance of this “signal” is that it notifies all employees of the importance of creating and maintaining a good corporate reputation.

This illustrative study of the effects of a strike‐induced supply interruption in an Australian product market shows that, although in the short term customers changed to a competitor's product when their usual brands were unavailable, overall market share returned to previous levels in the post‐strike period. However, the structure of the market was changed in that intra‐company brand competition increased after the strike relative to the degree of inter‐company brand competition. The study was too limited to rule out the influence of advertising, but this change is likely to have an influence on future profitability policy.

Now more than ever, businesses need to understand what the media is saying about them. The authors describe three types of media analysis: salience and sentiment analysis; theme and contradiction analysis; and problem and solution analysis, the first two of which are routinely commissioned by many companies. Using four case studies the authors describe how problem and solution analysis can be used to save costs and increase revenues.

Four case studies are used to illustrate the financial value that problem and solution media analysis can play in understanding and solving a range of business problems.

The authors show how the analysis of media commentary helped a public company to identify its most influential investment commentators; helped an appliance manufacturer to change its sales force compensation scheme; helped a financial services company to position its IPO; and helped an internet‐based share trading company to understand some conflicting research results. The financial value of these outcomes often far exceeded the price paid.

The authors compare and contrast three styles of media analytics. The review suggests that the problem and solution analysis technique is novel and financially valuable in situations where media coverage creates problems.

The purpose of this paper is to show that many companies are degrading their corporate reputations because they are making (“bad”) profits at the expense of customer satisfaction.

The practices of Australia's Big 4 commercial banks are used to describe the practice of making “good” and “bad” profits.

“Good” profits are made by creating value for customers and dealing fairly with other stakeholders. “Bad” profits annoy or exploit customers and other stakeholders.

When “bad” profits are a significant part of a company's overall profitability, then corporate reputation and trust amongst stakeholders degrades.

This paper helps managers understand the reputation implications of making “bad” profits.

Customer loyalty presents a paradox. Many see it as primarily an attitude‐based phenomenon that can be influenced significantly by customer relationship management initiatives such as the increasingly popular loyalty and affinity programs. However, empirical research shows that loyalty in competitive repeat‐purchase markets is shaped more by the passive acceptance of brands than by strongly‐held attitudes about them. From this perspective, the demand‐enhancing potential of loyalty programs is more limited than might be hoped. Reviews three different perspectives on loyalty, and relates these to a framework for understanding customer loyalty that encompasses customer brand commitment, customer brand acceptance and customer brand buying. Uses this framework to analyze the demand‐side potential of loyalty programs. Discusses where these programs might work and where they are unlikely to succeed on any large scale. Provides a checklist for marketers.