Intermediary Corporate Reputation Formation Mechanism And Relationship With Business Performance

After the exposure of companies' scandals like Enron, Xerox, Worldcom and China's Yinguangsha, the credit of the total society fell to the bottom of the valley. The differences between corporate reputations that were neglected by social common in the past began to gain more and more attention today. Under the social stress, companies had to focus on the building and maintaining of their reputation. As a key link linking demanders and suppliers, and as the main third part to solve the problem of information asymmetry and to reduce the moral hazard, the medium company's reputation is much more important. But this day, native medium companies were facing austere test of moral. The competition between companies has experienced the period of product competition, quality competition, price competition and service competition, and is coming to a higher stage now. Although the reputation assets increasingly influence the firm competition, our firms still lack the effective methods to manage corporate reputation. The reputation theories up to date still have not fulfilled the demand of firms, which remains the biggest challenge for our practice of reputation management. Therefore, how to make use of the reputation is becoming a new problem when companies want to make success.This research was based on the theory of corporate reputation. It compounds the macro-explanation about reputation by economics and the micro-research on the structure of reputation by management. It discussed the significance of corporate reputation for medium companies to participate in the market activities and the industry competition, defined the meaning of corporate reputation, clarified the precondition and factors of medium corporate reputation, and brought forward the mechanism of reputation's forming. Compared with former researches, this research made five breakthroughs. Firstly, it enriched the meaning of corporate reputation through the subdivision of the stakeholders. Secondly, it established the relationship among medium companies, stakeholders and environment. Thirdly, it established the relationship between the objective exist of the corporate reputation and the activity of medium companies. Fourthly, Dividing the process of reputation for the medium company into three key links, this article helps the native medium companies establish a effective procedure for reputation management. Fifthly, under the goal to achieve effective management, this article gain key factors driving the reputation of medium companies and divide them into four types. Offering important references to reputation management for medium companies.Based on the theoretic research, this research also used multifold methods to discover the driven factors and the structure factors of medium corporate reputation, and approved that the environment and scale can influence companies' decision of reputation investment. Help native medium companies establish a process to implement the reputation management. This research came to many conclusions as follow.(1) The main stakeholders of medium companies included clients, employees and social common. Four factors, client-oriented, service quality, company quality and service reliability, are remarkably correlative to the clients. Five factors, management ability, grow-up opportunity, working condition, leadership and salaries, are remarkably correlative to the employees. Three factors, Ad, social responsibility and attractiveness, are remarkably correlative to the social commons.(2) Social credit stress and company scale are remarkably correlative to the willingness of company's reputation investment. When the social credit stress is high, the reputation quotation is remarkably correlative to the performance. When the scale of medium company is high, the reputation quotation is remarkably correlative to the performance.(3) This research approved that medium companies can improve their corporate reputation by adjusting the driven factors of reputation. In case study, author changed three client-driven factors, two employee-driven factors and three common-driven factors, and achieved performance improvement.Finally, this research brought forward four advices: building effective mechanism to identify reputation, cultivating consciousness to identify environment, insisting scientific investment decision, keeping consistency.