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My Company Cares About My Success…I Think: Clarifying Why and When a Firm’s Ethical Reputation Impacts Employees’ Subjective Career Success

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Abstract

The value of a company’s ethical reputation has become a focal point for management researchers. We seek to join this conversation and extend the research centered on a firm’s ethical reputation. We accomplish this by shifting our focus away from its impact on external stakeholders to its impact on internal stakeholders. To this end, we rely on signaling theory to explain why a firm’s ethical reputation matters to its employees in an effort to bridge the macro–micro research gap. Across two studies, we propose and demonstrate that a firm’s ethical reputation impacts employee subjective career success in form of career opportunities and work–life balance. Given our signaling theory framework, we also identify and explain when two industry-level characteristics operate as boundary conditions that distort a firm’s ethical reputation signaling properties. Specifically, the results demonstrate that a firm’s ethical reputation is positively related to employees’ perceptions of career opportunities and work–life balance. The results of our studies also demonstrate that the relatively high levels of industry competition and industry regulation weaken the positive impact of a firm’s ethical reputation on career opportunities and work–life balance. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management, Farmer School of Business, Miami University, 800 E. High St., Oxford, OH, 45056, USA

    Darryl B. Rice

  2. Marketing and Management Department, Heider College of Business, Creighton University, Harper Center 3067, 2500 California Plaza, Omaha, NE, 68178, USA

    Regina M. Taylor

  3. Department of Accounting and International Business, Davies College of Business, University of Houston - Downtown, Houston, TX, 77002, USA

    Yiding Wang

  4. Accounting Department, Heider College of Business, Creighton University, Harper Center 3067, 2500 California Plaza, Omaha, NE, 68178, USA

    Sijing Wei & Valentina Ge

Authors
  1. Darryl B. Rice
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  2. Regina M. Taylor
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  3. Yiding Wang
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  4. Sijing Wei
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  5. Valentina Ge
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Correspondence to Darryl B. Rice.

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Appendix 1

Appendix 1

Variable definition

Variable

Definition

AD_EXPit

A firm’s advertising expense in the current year deflated by total assets at the beginning of the current year

AGEit

The natural log of a firm’s lifetime

COit+1

The average career opportunity rating received by a firm in year t + 1

Competitionit

Proxied by Herfindahl Index multiplied by negative one

Ethicsit

Indicator variable coded as one if a firm has been selected into Ethisphere Magazine’s The World’s Most Ethical Companies list in the current year, and coded as zero, otherwise

LEVit

A firm’s total long-term liability divided by total assets at the beginning of the current year

MTBit

Firms’ market value of equity divided by book value of equity in the current year

NonReg

Indicator variable coded as one if the firm from nonregulatory industries, and coded as zero, otherwise. Regulatory industries are defined following He and Yang (2014)

RD_EXPit

A firm’s research and development expense in the current year deflated by total assets at the beginning of the current year

ROAit

A firm’s income in the current year is deflated by total assets at the beginning of the current year

SIZEit

The natural log of a firm’s assets of the current year

STOCK_RETURNit

A firm’s annual compounding stock returns based on monthly return data during the current year

STOCK_VOLATILITYit

Standard deviation of a firm’s monthly stock returns during the current year

WLBit+1

The average work–life balance rating received by a firm in year t + 1

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Rice, D.B., Taylor, R.M., Wang, Y. et al. My Company Cares About My Success…I Think: Clarifying Why and When a Firm’s Ethical Reputation Impacts Employees’ Subjective Career Success. J Bus Ethics 186, 159–177 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-022-05143-9

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