ORIGINAL ARTICLE Corporate Reputation: Fashion, Fad, or Phenomenon? Naomi A. Gardberg 1 Ó Macmillan Publishers Ltd & Reputation Institute 2017 Abstract In this paper I examined whether corporate reputation was a fad or fashion in organization science research. If corporate reputation was a fad, then we would see a sharp increase and subsequent sharp decrease in research. I performed a content analysis exploring the way in which authors described their work in leading manage- ment and business and society journals. I focused on four corporate associations (corporate celebrity, corporate identity, corporate image, and corporate reputation) to operationalize a fashion to which corporate reputation research may belong. Following prior research on fads and fashions on organization management research, I counted the incidence of these four constructs in article titles, abstracts and key words from 1997 through 2016. I observed a steady increase in the number of articles about corporate celebrity, corporate identity, corporate image, and corporate reputation over twenty years rejecting the old assertions that research about corporate reputation and related corporate associations was a fad. The number of articles on corporate reputation equaled the number of articles about the other three corporate associations. I found no evidence of a fashion; however, as more time passes scholars may find that research on corporate reputation and related constructs comprised a fashion. Surprisingly I observed that the number of articles on corporate reputa- tion published in the two business and society journals was twice the number of articles published in the six general management journals. In conclusion, I find evidence that corporate reputation research has become a phenomenon especially in the business & society and ethics field. Keywords Corporate reputation Á Corporate image Á Corporate identity Á Corporate associations Á Fads Á Fashions About 20 years ago an impressionable doctoral student (the author) sampled the corporate reputation literature. She knew that she was interested in intangible assets, in par- ticular how intangible assets facilitated foreign direct investment, corporate diversification, and firm perfor- mance. The difficulty of measuring intangibles intrigued her. And, various studies contrasting a firm’s market value to the value of its tangible assets (e.g., Tobin’s Q) con- vinced her of the potential. Yet, senior scholars within her business school and at academic conferences warned her that corporate reputation was a fad. A dissertation in this field would be foolhardy. As I reflect on the past 20 years of Corporate Reputation Review and the resilience of research on corporate reputation, it is clear that the con- struct of corporate reputation is neither a fad nor even fashion. 1 Rather corporate reputation is a phenomenon spanning academic and practitioner research. In the next few pages, I will substantiate my assertions. & Naomi A. Gardberg Naomi.Gardberg@baruch.cuny.edu 1 Narendra Paul Loomba Department of Management, Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College - City University of New York, One Bernard Baruch Way, Box B9-240, New York, NY 10010, USA 1 Of course, as more time passes scholars may find that research on corporate reputation and related constructs, such as image and identity, comprise a fashion. Corp Reputation Rev DOI 10.1057/s41299-017-0033-4