Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons^™

The Companies We Keep: From Legitimacy To Reputation In Retail Investment, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington

Brooke Harrington

Few studies have examined public response to unethical or illegal behavior by firms, despite some research on institutional investors, organized protest groups or shareholder activists. Although a robust research literature shows that corporations invest heavily in impression management the relevant audiences for these messages have generally been construed by scholars as other organizations, obscuring the micro-foundations of market activity. This paper will address the knowledge gap by drawing on evidence from a long term field study of retail investors. Based on their responses to firms’ misconduct before and after the corporate fraud scandals of the twentieth century, this paper will …