María D. Odriozola

The relationship between labour social responsibility practices and reputation

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to analyse whether labour social responsibility (LSR) practices influence on corporate reputation (CR) and on labour reputation (LR). Design/methodology/approach - – LSR is defined as all those labour practices made by a company for the benefit of employees voluntarily and not imposed by labour legislation. An index developed by content analysis was created to measure LRS. CR and LR scores were obtained from the Business Monitor of Corporate Reputation (MERCO) for the period of 2006-2010. Furthermore, based on the previous literature, the study considers other generic variables that influence the process of creating reputation, such as visibility and environmental impact, as well as intrinsic characteristics of each company (size, financial performance and debt). The model was estimated by the generalised method of moments (GMM) on a data panel for the 100 most reputable firms in Spain in each year during the period 2006-2010. Findings - – The results obtained show that LSR carried out by the company has a direct and positive relationship with the reputation. Thus, corporate and labour reputation and their evolution depend on ability of the LSR strategy of the company to satisfy to future expectations of stakeholders. Originality/value - – Previous literature considered the impact of different dimensions of corporate social responsibility on CR, e.g., environmental, communication, quality of products, but did not consider labour practices.

Transparencia y comunicación: las seis preguntas de Kipling

Transparency has become an object of desire for managers and companies, and it is one of the keys of organizational communication. However, it is often mistakenly understood as a mere form of disclosure, considering only one-way communication to the receiver. Shortcomings identified in definitions of transparency lead to propose it through the consistency of the elements of communication: issuer, message, channel and receiver, as well as the questions posed by Kipling in one of his most famous works, where he introduces his six honest serving men: what, why, when, how, where and who (6W). A three-dimensional model of transparency is proposed with a 7-step path, which constitutes a very simple and useful tool for companies, who have to think over and assess the suitability of each element if they want to implement a transparent communication strategy.

The Impact of Internal Corporate Governance Mechanisms on Corporate Social Performance in the Banking Industry

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the relationship between corporate governance (CG) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) by analysing the effect of internal governance and monitoring mechanisms on the corporate social performance (CSP) of banks. To carry out our analysis, we propose to regress both a fixed-effects and a random-effects model using an unbalanced panel composed of 118 banks from 19 countries. The overall period of analysis runs from 2002 to 2014, although it has been divided into two different sub-periods before and after the banking system crisis: period 1 (2002–2007) and period 2 (2008–2014), in order to analyse the existence of a structural change with different impacts on the CG-CSR relationship. This research shows that some internal governance and monitoring mechanisms, namely, those related to controlling ownership and the structure of the board of directors, have an important influence on the social performance of banks, although these mechanisms were only relevant during the crisis period (2008–2014).

Labour reputation and financial performance: is there a causal relationship?

The purpose of this paper is to analyse if there is a circular relationship of causality between the labour dimension of corporate social performance (CSP) and corporate financial performance (CFP).,The sample is formed by the best companies to work for in Spain according to the labour reputation (LR) ranking developed by MERCO from 2006 to 2013. This study overcomes the limitations of previous studies using the panel data methodology (System generalised method of moments) and the Granger causality test.,The results suggest that the labour dimension of CSP cause CFP, but there is not causality in the opposite direction.,Studies about the relationship between dimensions of CSP and CFP demonstrated that there are divergences in the results depending on the dimension analysed. Despite managers and employees are interested in the impact of labour dimension of CSP on CFP, there are few studies about it and they have important limitations.