What happens when brands tell the truth? Exploring the effects of transparency signaling on corporate reputation for agribusiness

ABSTRACT

This study focused on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) within agribusiness – an industry confronted with particularly high expectations from its societal environment. This study examined the effects of transparency signaling and its interaction with the nature of CSR on publics’ evaluation of an agribusiness company with regards to perceived integrity, perceived competence, and company reputation. Our findings showed that high transparency signaling led to higher perceived integrity, but there were no significant effects on perceived competence and company reputation. Moreover, the effects of transparency signaling were moderated by the nature of CSR on company reputation. The study also revealed that perceived integrity influenced the relationship between transparency and company reputation, while perceived competence was not influenced by transparency signaling. Researchers discuss the implications of these findings for communication professionals sharing CSR information, especially for high involvement industries like food and agriculture.

KEYWORDS:

• Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
• CSR report
• transparency
• trust
• company reputation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Hyejoon Rim http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0357-4750

Notes

1. Responses for low transparency condition include: ‘This report could be incomplete as it only addresses goals the company has achieved and not those they may have failed at,’ ‘No because the only two examples were overwhelmingly positive ones, and it’s very unlikely that the entire CSR was reached/achieved in this manner. By framing it like this they ignore the rest of the data and skew the perception of the consumer.’ Responses for high transparency condition include: ‘This report includes more information and is more transparent, revealing failures and successes,’ ‘The report is honest and doesn’t just praise everything they do. This transparency is important as investors need to know what is going well as well as what needs work,’ and ‘They included their strengths and weaknesses, but they should still include how they are changing and what they are doing to achieve these milestones.’