REPUTA O CORPORATIVA E DESEMPENHO ECON MICO-FINANCEIRO: UM ESTUDO EM CINCO GRANDES GRUPOS EMPRESARIAIS BRASILEIROS

Corporate reputation is in the center of contemporary organizational studies. However, the literature is usually focused in the perceptions that the stakeholders have about a firm’s reputation, ignoring if there is any relationship between these perceptions and the economic performance. The main purpose of this paper is to discuss this gap, identifying the possible differences and similarities between corporate reputation and economic performance. The methodology was centered in a quantitative approach through the use of descriptive statistics and hierarchical cluster analysis. The sample was composed by five major Brazilian companies and the research considered three dimensions of corporate reputation and nine variables of economic performance. The results show that higher levels of corporate reputation are not necessarily related to better economic performance. Because of that, firms should be careful about implementing strategies based on corporate reputation since they might not result in better balance sheets.