Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T19:55:08.831Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Trade Associations as Industry Reputation Agents: A Model of Reputational Trust

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Andrew Tucker
Andrew Tucker*
Affiliation:
University College London
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Scholars have started to focus on the ways in which firms manage their reputations through collective action. Collective reputation management is most often carried out through trade associations (TAs). But what do these TAs actually do? How do they further their members' interests with stakeholders like regulators, industry financial analysts, employees, suppliers, and the media? Informed by a rich set of 43 qualitative interviews with the trade associations (TAs) representing the UK's 24 largest business sectors, the paper builds a model of the reputational incentives that drives the dynamic relationship between trade associations, firms and multiple stakeholder groups. The paper's preliminary empirical research coupled with the conceptual model provides five directions for future research.

Keywords

trade associationsindustry reputationreputational trustcollective action
Type
Article
Information
Business and Politics , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , April 2008 , pp. 1 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © V.K. Aggarwal 2008 and published under exclusive license to Cambridge University Press 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aldrich, H. and Fiol, C. 1994. “Fools Rush In? The Institutional Context of Industry Creation.” Academy of Management Review 19 (4): 645–670.Google Scholar
Aldrich, H. and Staber, U.H. 1988. “Organizing business interests: Patterns of trade association foundings, transformations, and deaths.”’ In Ecological Models of Organizations, edited by Carroll, G.R. Cambridge: Ballinger.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah. 1998. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Astley, W.G. and Fombrun, C. 1983. “Collective Strategy: Social Ecology of Organizational Environments.” Academy of Management Review 8 (4): 576–587.Google Scholar
Axelrod, Robert. 1984. The Evolution of Cooperation. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Bachmann, Reinhard and Zaheer, Akbar. 2006. Handbook of Trust Research. London: Elgar Press.Google Scholar
Badrinath, S.G. and Bolster, Paul J. 1996. “The role of market forces in EPA enforcement activity.” Journal of Regulatory Economics 10 (2): 165–181.Google Scholar
Barber, Bernard. 1983. The Logic and Limits of Trust. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Barnett, M. L. 2006a. “Waves of Collectivizing: A Dynamic Model of Competition and Cooperation Over the Life of an Industry.” Corporate Reputation Review 8 (4): 272–292.Google Scholar
Barnett, M. L. 2006b. “Finding a Working Balance Between Competitive and Communal Strategies.” Journal of Management Studies 43 (8): 1753–1773.Google Scholar
Barney, J. 1991. “Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage.” Journal of Management 17 (1): 99–120.Google Scholar
Benhabib, Sylvia. 1996. Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Berens, Guido and van Riel, Cees B.M., 2004. “Corporate associations in the academic literature: three main streams of thought in the reputation.” Corporate Reputation Review 7 (2): 161–178.Google Scholar
Berg, B. L. 2007. Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Science. 6th edition. London: Pearson.Google Scholar
Bohman, James and Rehg, William. 1997. Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bromley, D. 2002. “Comparing Corporate Reputations: League Tables, Quotients, Benchmarks or Case Studies?” Corporate Reputation Review 5 (1): 35–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Celentani, M.D., Fidenberg, D., Levine, D.K. and Pesendorfer, W. 1996. “Maintaining a reputation against a long-lived opponent.” Econometrica 64: 691–704.Google Scholar
Christiano, Thomas. 1999. The Rule of the Many. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
DiMaggio, P.J. 1988. “Interest and agency in institutional theory.” In Institutional patterns and organizations: Culture and environment, edited by Zucker, L.G. Cambridge: Ballinger.Google Scholar
DiMaggio, P.J. and Powell, W.W. 1983. “The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields.” American Sociological Review 48 (2): 147–160.Google Scholar
Dowling, G.R. 2001. Creating Corporate Reputations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Estlund, David. 1993. “Who's Afraid of Deliberative Democracy? On the Strategic/Deliberative Dichotomy in Recent Constitutional Jurisprudence.” Texas Law Review 7 (7): 1437–1477.Google Scholar
Fombrun, C.J. 1996. Reputation: Realizing Value from Corporate Image. Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press.Google Scholar
Fombrun, C. and Shanley, M. 1990. “What's in a Name? Reputation Building and Corporate Strategy.” The Academy of Management Journal 33 (2): 233–258.Google Scholar
Fudenberg, D. and Levine, D.K. 1992. “Maintaining a reputation when strategies are imperfectly observed.” Review of Economic Studies 59: 561–579.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fudenberg, D. and Levine, D.K. 1994. “Efficiency and observability with long-run and short-run players.” Journal of Economic Theory 62: 103–135.Google Scholar
Fukuyama, Francis. 1995. Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Geyskens, I., Steenkamp, J.-B. and Kumar, N. 1998. “Generalizations about trust in marketing channel relationships using meta-analysis.” International Journal of Research in Marketing 15 (3): 223–248.Google Scholar
Goldsmith, R.E., Lafferty, B.A. and Newell, S.J. 2000. “The impact of corporate credibility and celebrity credibility on consumer reactions to advertisements and brands.” Journal of Advertising 29 (3): 43–54.Google Scholar
Grant, Wyn. 2005. “Pressure Groups: A Politics of Collective Consumption.” Parliamentary Affairs 58 (2): 366–379.Google Scholar
Greenwood, R., Suddaby, R. and Hinings, C.R. 2002. “Theorizing change: the role of professional associations in the transformation of institutional fields,” Academy of Management Journal 45 (1): 58–80.Google Scholar
Gutmann, A. and Thompson, D. 1996. Democracy and Disagreement. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, J. 1984. Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1, trans. McCarthy, Thomas. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Hall, R. 1992. “The Strategic Analysis of Intangible Resources,” Strategic Management Journal 13: 135–144.Google Scholar
Hardin, G. 1968. “Tragedy of the Commons.” Science 162: 1243–1248.Google Scholar
Hardy, C. and Phillips, N. 1998. “Strategies of Engagement: Lessons from the Critical Examination of Collaboration and Conflict in an Interorganizational Domain.” Organization Science 9 (2): 217–230.Google Scholar
Harré, Rom. 1999. “Trust and its surrogates: psychological foundations of political process.” In Democracy & Trust, edited by Warren, Mark E. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hellman, Deborah. 2001. “Judging By Appearances: Professional Ethics, Expressive Government, and the Moral Significance of How Things Seem.” Maryland Law Review 60 (3): 653–87.Google Scholar
Hetherington, Marc. 2004. Why Trust Matters: Declining Political Trust and the Demise of American Liberalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hillman, A. and Hitt, M. 1999. “Corporate Political Strategy Formulation: A Model of Approach, Participation, and Strategy Decisions.” Academy of Management Review 24 (4): 825–844.Google Scholar
Hoffman, A. 1997. From Heresy to Dogma: An Institutional History of Corporate Environmentalism. San Francisco: The New Lexington Press.Google Scholar
Honig, Bonnie. 1993. Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics. Ithica: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Ireland, D. R., Hitt, M.A. and Vaidyanath, D. 2002. “Alliance Management as a Source of Competitive Advantage.” Journal of Management 28 (3): 353–446.Google Scholar
Jarillo, J.C. 1988. “On Strategic Networks.” Strategic Management Journal 9: 31–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karpoff, J.M., Lott, J.R. and Wehrly, E.W. 2005. “The Reputational Penalties for Environmental Violations: Empirical Evidence.” The Journal of Law & Economics 48: 653–675.Google Scholar
King, A.A., Lenox, M.J. and Barnett, M.L. 2002. “Strategic responses to the reputation commons problem.” In Organizations, policy and the natural environment: Institutional and strategic perspectives, edited by Hoffman, A. and Ventresca, M., Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Kramer, Roderick M. 2006. Organizational Trust. A Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lawrence, T.B. 1999. “Institutional Strategy.” Journal of Management 25 (2): 161–188.Google Scholar
Lehne, R. 2001. Government and Business. American Political Economy in Comparative Perspective. New York: Chatham House.Google Scholar
Lorenzoni, G. and Lipparini, A. 1999. “The leveraging of interfirm relationships as a distinctive organizational capability: a longitudinal study.” Strategic Management Journal 20 (4): 317–338.Google Scholar
Manin, Bernard, Przeworski, Adam and Stokes, Susan C. 1999. Democracy, Accountability, and Representation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mayer, R.C., Davis, J.H. and Schoorman, F.D. 1995. “An Integrative Model of Organizational Trust.” Academy of Management Review 20 (3): 709–734.Google Scholar
McGahan, A.M and Porter, M.E. 1997. “How Much does Industry Matter, really?” Strategic Management Journal 18 (1): 15–30.Google Scholar
Miner, T., Amburgey, A. and Stearns, T. 1990. “Interorganizational Linkages and Population Dynamics: Buffering and Transformational Shields.” Administrative Science Quarterly 35 (4): 689–713.Google Scholar
Newell, S.J. and Goldsmith, R.E. 2001. “The development of a scale to measure perceived corporate credibility.” Journal of Business Research 52 (3): 235–247.Google Scholar
North, Douglass. 1990. Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Olson, M. 1965. The logical of collective action: Public goods and the theory of groups. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Ostrom, E. 1990. Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Parsons, Talcott. 1977. The Evolution of Societies. Edited with introduction by Jackson, Toby. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Perelman, Chaim and Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. 1969. The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation. Translated by Wilkinson, John and Weaver, Purcell. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Pijnenburg, B. 1998. “EU lobbying by ad hoc coalitions: an exploratory case study.” Journal of European Public Policy 5 (2): 303–321.Google Scholar
Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. 1981. “Justice: On Relating Private and Public.” Political Theory 9: 327–52.Google Scholar
Powell, W.W., Koput, K.W. and Smith-Doerr, L. 1996. “Interorganizational collaboration and the locus of innovation: Networks of learning in biotechnology.” Administrative Science Quarterly 35: 116–145.Google Scholar
Rao, H. 1994. “The social construction of reputation: Certification contests, legitimation, and the survival of organizations in the American automobile industry: 1912-1985.” Strategic Management Journal 15: 29–44.Google Scholar
Rees, J. 1997. “The development of communitarian regulation in the chemical industry.” Law & Policy 19 (4): 477–528.Google Scholar
Richardson, J. 2000. “Government, Interest Groups and Policy Change.” Political Studies 48: 1006–1025.Google Scholar
Sako, M. 1992. Prices, Quality and Trust. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schmalensee, R. 1985. “Do markets differ much?” American Economic Review 75 (3): 335–351.Google Scholar
Scott, W.R. 1981. Organizations: Rational, Natural, and Open Systems. Inglewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Selnes, F. and Gønhaug, K. 2000. “Effects of supplier reliability and benevolence in business marketing.” Journal of Business Research 49 (3): 259–271.Google Scholar
Selsky, John W. 1991. “Lessons in Community Development: An Activist Approach to Stimulating Interorganizational Collaboration.” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 27 (1): 91–115.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Ian. 1999. “Enough of Deliberation: Politics is about Interests and Power.” In, Deliberative Politics, edited by Macedo, Stephen Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Streech, W. and Schmitter, P. 1985. Private Interest Government. San Francisco Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Thompson, Dennis F. 1995. Ethics in Congress: From Individual to Institutional Corruption. Washington: The Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Walzer, Michael. 1999. “Deliberation, and What Else?” In Deliberative Politics. Essays on Democracy and Disagreement, edited by Macedo, Stephen. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society. edited by Roth, G. and Wittich, C., 2 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Cynthia Clark. 2005. “Trust Diffusion: The Effect of Interpersonal Trust on Structure, Function and Organizational Transparency.” Business & Society 44 (3): 357–368.Google Scholar
Williamson, O.E. 1993. “Calculativeness, Trust, and Economic Organization.” Journal of Law and Economics 36: 453–486.Google Scholar