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Mediating Reputation: Credit Reporting Systems in American History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2013

Kenneth Lipartito
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Abstract

Examining the development of credit reporting in the United States, this article shows how new, formal methods of assessment of risk and trustworthiness came to mediate business reputations in the credit market over the past century and a half. It focuses on the conflicts over reputation provoked by the new means of assessment and how those conflicts were controlled through organizational procedures and routines as new methodologies were introduced. After World War II seemingly objective quantitative methodologies for evaluating credit worthiness were developed, but they did not eliminate the place of reputation in business decision-making.

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Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 87 , Issue 4: Corporate Reputation , Winter 2013 , pp. 655 - 677
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2013 

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References

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87 Although the legacy of discrimination and poverty still worked against those with little or no credit history, expanding the availability of credit would, presumably, correct that problem in time. As everyone got access to credit, everyone would have a behavioral pattern of credit use that could serve as the basis for his or her score.

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