Linking corporate reputation and shareholder value using the publication of reputation rankings

Good corporate reputation is one of the most valuable assets and causes a multitude of favorable impacts within different stakeholder groups. As a consequence, a lot of studies analyze the relationship between corporate reputation and financial performance. However, most of them raise the question of causation due to their methodology. In order to isolate the causal impact of corporate reputation on financial performance, some authors conduct event studies, but without remarkable success. Therefore, this study provides initially a comprehensive theoretical background for why reputation should affect financial performance. According to the resulting hypotheses, an event study is conducted to analyze the impact of the publication of reputation rankings by the German Manager Magazin on share prices. As hypothesized, positive and negative announcement effects exist regarding upgraded or downgraded companies respectively. Consequently, investors gain new information from the published rankings (increases or decreases in reputation) to adjust share prices.