CEO activism — the practice of CEOs taking public positions on environmental, social, and political issues not directly related to their business — has become a hotly debated topic in corporate governance. To better understand the implications of CEO activism, we examine its prevalence, the...

Firms change over time. Which changes are so damaging that consumers believe the firm’s very identity ceases to exist? We explored this question using Twitter data and eight experiments involving nearly 3,000 subjects. Consumers judged that moral deteriorations were particularly disruptive to...

In this updated Closer Look, we examine the tensions between corporate culture, financial incentives, and employee conduct as illustrated by the Wells Fargo cross-selling scandal. In 2016, Wells Fargo admitted that employees had opened as many as 2 million accounts without customer authorization...

In March 2013, Lululemon Athletica removed its inventory of women's black yoga pants from its stores because recent shipments of the product were “too sheer.” For a company reliant on a reputation for quality, the news was devastating. Worse, the recall set off a series of PR related...

Wealth management constitutes an important aspect of today's banking world, but very little is known about what explains the differences among banks in their ability to attract new assets under management. Using a unique panel database of Swiss private banks, we test the hypothesis that the...

This paper discusses reputational risk in the context of central banking and explains why it matters to central banks. It begins with a general discussion of reputational risk within the broader framework of risk management. It then outlines how central banks define, measure, monitor and manage...