Corporate Risk Reporting: A study of The Impact of

Risk Disclosure on Firms Reputation

Waël Louhichi, Ousayna Zreik

To cite this version:

Waël Louhichi, Ousayna Zreik. Corporate Risk Reporting: A study of The Impact of Risk Dis-
closure on Firms Reputation. Economics Bulletin, Economics Bulletin, 2015, 35 (4), pp.2395-
2408.

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1. Introduction
Numerous studies have examined the impact of voluntary and mandatory disclosure on firm
reputation. Armitage and Marston (2008) reveal that the major motivations for firm disclosure
of risk are enhancing the company’s reputation for openness, as well as maintaining
confidence in the company among shareholders and others. Beyer and Dye (2012) find that
managers can build a strong reputation by disclosing even the most negative forecasts. Zeng
et al. (2012) notice that firms with better reputations are more likely to disclose environmental
information. While the prior literature suggests a connection between disclosure and company
reputation, there is no study concerning the impact of risk disclosure on reputation. In
addition, several of these papers have used pooled data and, in effect, ignore the impact of
individual firms. Our study attempts to contribute to the existing literature in several ways.
First, our objective is to examine whether more risk reporting through annual reports can
improve company image and promote reputation. Second, we use a panel data methodology to
control for heterogeneity among individual firms and compare the results of alternative
empirical models. Furthermore, we aim in this study to contribute to legitimacy theory.
Despite the high risk of negative reactions from investors over less-than-excellent news,
several firms are choosing to disclose more information about their operations, even the most
negative. This high level of transparency may make companies more desirable among
investors, and thereby contributes to improving firm reputation. Additionally, prior studies
assume a positive link between transparency and reputation (Mazzola et al., 2006;
Ussahawanitchakit, 2011; and Kongpunya et al., 2011). The purpose of this paper is to
respond to two substantial questions. The first of these concerns the expected reaction of
investors to risk communication. On the one hand, they may consider this information as risky
and thus choose not to invest in the company, which they may deem undesirable. On the other
hand, investors may consider this “negative” information to be a sign of transparency, which
will incite them to invest in the company. The second question concerns the impact of
company risk level on investor notions. Furthermore, we attempt to detect whether risk
reporting for firms with very high-risk exposure has the same impact on reputation.
We use the “France’s Most Admired Companies” list published in Fortune Magazine in order
to measure company reputation. We measure risk disclosure by using “six risk word” lists
(uncertain, weak model, negative, legal, opportunity and environment and social
responsibility lists), by adopting Zreik and Louhichi’s methodology (2015). We find that risk
disclosure promotes reputation. This result is robust for alternative empirical models (pooled
OLS, fixed effects, and random effects) and for alternative measurements of reputation. We
also test the impact of different types of risk communication (uncertain, weak model,
negative, legal, opportunity and environment and social responsibility) on reputation. The
results show that these different types of risk words impact reputation in different ways.
Furthermore, we conduct an additional analysis to test whether risk exposure has any impact
on the relationship between risk reporting and reputation. We observe that for very high-risk
firms, risk reporting does not impact the firm's reputation.
Our study reveals several interesting findings. First, we highlight the positive impact of
communication about risk on the firm's reputation. Second, we find that pooled OLS over-
estimates this impact. Our results provide support for the legitimacy theory, as we show that
revealing more information about risks and uncertainty over annual reports is compensated
with a positive reputation. To our knowledge, this study is the first that attempts to examine
the impact of risk reporting on reputation in the French market. Our findings have
implications for both theory and practice. First, the impact of risk disclosure on reputation
does not dissent from the impact of total firm disclosure. Second, the results of our study
encourage firms to be more transparent, even about their potential risk, to enhance their
reputation.
The paper proceeds as follows. First, we present a brief literature review about the connection
between reputation and firm disclosure. Second, we detail the data and research methodology.
Our main findings are then presented, and we then verify the robustness of our results. Lastly,
we summarize and conclude the paper.

2. Literature review
The importance of building a good reputation has received significant attention. Several
studies consider reputation to be a powerful factor in organizational viability (Scott and
Walsham, 2005; and Vidaver-Cohen and Brønn, 2013). Since reputation is considered to be a
measure of investor perceptions of company performance (Scott and Walsham, 2005; Petkova
et al., 2014; Rindova and Fombrun, 1999; Keh and Xie, 2009), the previous literature has
tried to determine whether social responsibility can have an impact on reputation. Brammer
and Pavelin (2004) notice that there is a positive link between reputation, measured by using
the “Britain’s Most Admired Companies” ranking, and social performance. In addition, they
highlight that this connection is clearer for the biggest firms. As well as this, Maden et al.
(2012) confirm that corporate social responsibility not only positively impacts reputation but
also has a positive effect on investor, employee, and client behaviour. Moreover, Michelon
(2011) shows that company reputation leads to improved sustainability disclosure by using an
international sample (57 constituents of the Dow Jones sustainability index).
Very few studies have focused solely on analyzing the impact of risk reporting through annual
reports on firm reputation, such as Chong (2013), who conducts a survey of the Hong Kong
exchange market to investigate the effects of risk disclosure on corporate reputation, corporate
trust and media visibility. The author concludes that the perceived importance of corporate
reputation is connected with forms of corporate attributes in risk disclosure.
As mentioned above, the quantity and the quality of disclosure promote reputation regardless
of whether this information is positive or negative. Our aim is to define whether
communication about risk information has any impact on reputation. Moreover, we focus on
the French market, since we observe a gap in the literature focusing on French firms.

3. Research Method
3.1. Sample design and data collection
The sample selection process begins with all firms listed in Euronext Paris and included the
SBF120 Index between 2006 and 2011. After excluding 17 financial firms and checking and
screening for apparent coding errors and missing data, a balanced panel data of 408 annual
reports of 68 firms remained for the estimation. The electronic annual reports were gathered
from the firms’ websites or by sending an e-mail to firms when the reports could not be
obtained from the website. As for reputation variables, we employ Fortune Magazine’s
reputation scores for six years (2006-2011). Because our focus is the French market, we use
the annual lists compiled and published by Fortune Magazine, ranking the top French firms.
We consider all firms on the Most Admired list and the Contenders list as high-reputation
firms. The difference between these two lists (Most Admired and Contenders) is that to
appear as Most Admired, a company must have scored in the top half of its industry survey.
The rest are listed as contenders. The final sample of reputation scores were 97 French firms
listed on Fortune Magazine’s Most Admired list over 6 years.
 Table 1

Descriptive Statistics

Table 1 presents descriptive statistics of our variables. The reputation scores are Fortune Magazine’s reputation scores,
published in its list of its “France’s Most Admired Companies”, the dummy variable of reputation is a dummy variable with a
value of 1 for those firms with a score on Fortune Magazine’s reputation scores and 0 otherwise. Risk disclosure is measured
by counting the frequency of “six risk words” lists. Firm age is the number of years since the firm’s founding. Firm value is
measured by the natural logarithm of annual firm market capitalization. Research and development expenditure is the annual
expenditure for research and development. Market to book ratio is market capitalization divided by book value of equity.

Variable Mean Std.Dev Min Max

Reputation scores 5.965567 .8096758 3.4 7.26

Dummy variable of reputation .2279412 .4200195 0 1

Risk disclosure 3362.1 3165.527 0 21728

Firm age 78.46324 69.39085 1 347
Firm value 8.439835 1.320575 5.317195 11.7849

Research and development expenditures 298365.8 483337 0 3152000

Market to book ratio 2.255812 2.129365 -1.62 34.25

We use several control variables: firm age, market capitalization, research and development
expenditure and market to book value. The market capitalization, book value, research and
development expenditure, and firm age data were derived from DataStream. Table 1
summarizes the descriptive statistics of our variables. We notice that reputation scores range
from 3.4 to 7.26 with a small standard deviation of approximately 0.81 and a mean of about 6.
The risk disclosure variable goes from 0 to 21728 risk words; this interprets the high standard
deviation (3166). Firm age, logarithm of market capitalization, research and development
expenditure and market to book ratio are ranked between 1 and 347, 5 and 12, 0 and 3152000
and -2 and 34 respectively with 69, 1.32, 483337 and 2.13 standard deviation respectively.

3.2. Variables: measurement and description

To measure risk disclosure (our independent variable), we follow Zreik and Louhichi (2015).
Therefore, we consider “six risk words” lists (Uncertain, Opportunity, Negative, Weak form,
Legal and Government Regulations and Environmental and Social Responsibility words). We
thus find 306 uncertain words, 25 opportunity words, 2184 negative words, 32 weak words,
889 legal and government regulations words, and 67 environmental and social responsibility
words. We measure total risk disclosure by calculating the total frequency of these risk words
in the annual reports.
For the dependent variable (firm reputation), we use two proxies. The first is the reputation
scores obtained from Fortune Magazine’s reputation scores, published with its list of
“France’s Most Admired Companies” (Philippe and Durand, 2011, Pfarrer et al., 2010 and
Basideo et al., 2006) and its list of “France’s Contenders” companies. The second one is a
dummy variable which distinguishes between those firms with a score in Fortune Magazine’s
reputation scores, published with its list of “France’s Most Admired Companies” and those
without a score (Delgado-García et al., 2013). We use the second proxy in order to test the
robustness of our findings.
The previous literature proposes several variables to use as controls for the reputation model.
Ussahawanitchakit et al. (2011) use firm experience, measured by the number of employees
currently working for a firm; firm capital, which was measured by the amount of capital
invested; and finally, firm reward, which was measured by the recognized awards a firm has
won. Hasseldine et al. (2005) use the beta, return on equity, industry, size (sales turnover),
research and development expenditure and corporate diversification. Philippe and Durand
(2011) use industry dummies; in addition, they include year dummies to control for inter-year
variability. They also use age as the logged number of years a firm has been operating, size
measured as a yearly logged measure of total assets, and performance by using two-year
average return on assets. Little et al. (2009) study how reputation explains variation in the
market to book value, and they obtain significant results in finding that firms with high
market to book ratio have a lower corporate reputation rate. We control our model for firm
age measured by the logarithm of the number of years since creation, firm size measured by
the natural logarithm of annual market capitalization, research and development expenditure
measured by the natural logarithm of annual research and development expenditure, and
market to book ratio measured by the annual average of daily market to book ratio. Prior
studies suggest a positive impact of firm age, firm size, market to book, and research and
development expenditures on the firm’s reputation (Deephouse and Carter, 2005; Little et al.,
2009; and Hasseldine et al., 2005).

3.3. Estimation Technique

To investigate the relationship between company reputation and risk disclosure, we estimate
the following models:
Basic model:
(1)

Robustness test model:

(2)

Where Scores is Fortune Magazine’s reputation scores, published with its list of “France’s
Most Admired Companies”, RepD is the reputation dummy variable with a value of 1 for
those firms with a score on Fortune magazine’s reputation scores, and 0 otherwise, RD is the
total number of risk words, Lage is the log of number of years since creation, Lmc is the
annual market capitalization log, LReDe is the annual research and development expenditure
log, and mtb is the annual average of daily market to book ratio.
As stated before, our data are organized in panel data. Panel data control for individual
heterogeneity by suggesting that individuals are both heterogeneous and homogeneous.
Moreover, this gives more informative data, more variability, less collinearity, and a greater
degree of freedom (Hsiao, 2003 and Klevmarken, 1989). In order to empirically test whether
an association exists between risk disclosure and the firm’s reputation scores, we use three
models (pooled OLS, fixed effects and random effects) for the reputation score model
(equation 1). In addition, we use pooled logistic, random-effects and fixed effects logistic
models for the reputation dummy variable (equation 2). In using the fixed effects model, we
assume that the individual may impact or bias the predictors. The fixed effects model removes
this effect and tabulates the net effect of the predictors on the outcome variable (Wooldridge,
2002 and Christopher, 2006). Another important assumption of the fixed effects model is that
this impact of the individual is unique and should not be correlated with other individual
characteristics. Each entity is different, therefore the entity’s error term and the constant
(which captures individual characteristics) should not be correlated with the others. If the
error terms are correlated, then the fixed effects model is not suitable. The random effects
model supposes that the individual effects are held by the intercept and a random component.
This random component is not correlated with the predictor. To choose between fixed and
random effects, we use the Hausman test (Hausman, 1978). The null hypothesis is that the
random effect is preferred because the errors are not correlated with the regressors. Moreover,
we calculate the Lagrange multiplier (LM) test (Breusch and Pagan, 1980) that helps to
choose between a random effects regression and a pooled OLS regression. The null
hypothesis in the LM test is that variances across entities are zero. Furthermore, we provide
several statistical tests to examine the validity of our results, such as the Wooldridge test for
autocorrelation for panel data, and the variance inflation factor (VIF) to test autocorrelation
for the pooled OLS model.

4. Empirical Results and Discussion

In this section we display the results from the different tests in several stages. First, we detail
the results regarding total risk reporting. We then present the results regarding “risk word”
lists. After that, we present the robustness test. Lastly, we carry out a raft of additional
analyses to recognize the impact of the level of a firm’s risk on this relation (the association
between risk disclosure and company reputation).

4.1. Findings regarding total risk reporting

Table 2 reports the regression results for equation 1 using three different methodologies:
pooled OLS, the fixed effects model, and the random effects model. The results show that risk
reporting has a positive impact on company reputation at the 1% significance level for the
pooled OLS and random effects model. The fixed effects model presents no significant
association between risk disclosure and company reputation, but the F-test of the model was
not significant (about 0.26, not tabulated). Regarding these findings, we conclude that the
positive impact of risk reporting on reputation is robustness.
The point estimates range from 0.009% to 0.011%, suggesting that a firm’s reputation level
increases by about 0.009% to 0.011% when risk disclosure increases by 1%. The impact of
control variables on reputation has unexpected signs, except company size: firm age measured
by the logarithm of the number of years since founding has a negative impact on reputation
and the logarithm of research and development expenditure is also negative and significant at
the 1 % level. Book to market ratio has a negative and significant association with reputation
at 10% for random effects. Firm size measured by the logarithm of market capitalization
impacts positively and significantly on company reputation at the 1% level. To identify
which empirical methodology (pooled OLS, fixed effects, or random effects) is most suitable,
we carry out two statistical tests: first, the Lagrange multiplier test for random effects. The
null hypothesis is that the variances across individuals are zero. The acceptance of the null
hypothesis suggests that the random effects model is not preferred.
The results show that we cannot accept the null hypothesis. This means that the random
effects model is more suitable than pooled regression. If we compare the two coefficients of
both models we notice that the coefficient from the pooling regression equals approximately
1.2 times the coefficient of random effects regression. Thus, pooled OLS over-estimates the
impact of risk reporting on reputation. Second, we perform the Hausman specification test
(Hausman, 1978) to identify which model is more suitable (random or fixed effects). Under
the Hausman test the null hypothesis suggests that the random effect model is preferred
because the errors are not correlated with the regressors. Looking at table 2, the null
hypothesis is accepted and the random model is more suitable. We next address serial
autocorrelation issues that might impact the estimation results. We perform a Wooldridge test
that supposes no serial autocorrelation among variables as the null hypothesis. The results
show an absence of autocorrelation.
Table 2

The impact of total risk reporting on reputation scores

Table 2 presents the results of pooled OLS, fixed effects and random effects model of the equation (1):

Scores is the Fortune magazine’s reputation scores, published with its list of “France’s Most Admired Companies”, RD is the
total number of “risk words”, Lage is the log of the number of years since creation, Lmc is the log of annual market
capitalization, LReDe is the annual research and development expenditure log, and mtb is the annual average of daily market to
book ratio. The Lagrange multiplier test is used to test the random effects model versus pooling regression. The Hausman
specification test is used to test the fixed effects model versus the random effects model. The variance inflation factor is
tabulated to test the autocorrelation for pooling regression. The Wooldridge test is used to test the serial autocorrelation for
panel data.
* Significant at the 10 % level
** Significant at 5% level.
*** Significant at 1% level.
Variable Pooled OLS Fixed effects Random effects

Scores Coef P. Value Vif Coef P.value Coef P.Value

RD .00011*** 0.000 1.25 -.00003 0.631 .00009*** 0.011

Lage -.33232*** 0.003 1.95 -1.08430 0.219 -.34345*** 0.008

Lmc .42066*** 0.000 2.01 .36248 0.255 .38992*** 0.001

LReDe -.27125*** 0.012 1.06 -.02359 0.344 -.24955** 0.051

mtb -.02229 0.233 1.12 .33707 0.286 -.02798* 0.106

Constant 6.087666*** 0.000 2.70076 0.640 6.29953*** 0.001

R-square 0.37 0.01 0.42

Mean VIF 1.48 Wooldridge test for autocorrelation 0.2357

Lagrange multiplier test for random effects 0.0227 Hausman fixed random effects test 0.6807

As shown above, investors prefer firms that address their potential risk and their uncertainty
more openly to firms that hide this kind of information. Managers should disclose even the
risks and uncertainty companies are facing to build a good reputation, especially in view of
the fact that firms with good reputations experience greater market rewards for positive
surprises and smaller market penalties for negative surprises (Pfarrer et al., 2010). On the one
hand, disclosing this negative information may cause stock price to fall short-term; but, at the
same time, being clear and unambiguous can prevent damage to reputation in the long-run
(Fuller and Jensen, 2002). On the other hand, opacity and vagueness in firm reporting hinders
shareholder ability to discriminate good from bad projects at an early stage (Bleck and Liu,
2007); and consequently impacts reputation negatively. Our results are consistent with
previous research. Beyer and Dye (2012) find that managers can build a strong reputation by
disclosing even the most negative forecasts. Likewise, legitimacy theory is based on the idea
that companies signal their legitimacy by disclosing clear and obvious information in their
annual report (Watson et al., 2002). Furthermore, Shocker and Sethi (1973) show that every
firm has a social contract with society. The firm continues if it delivers socially desirable ends
to society, and economic, social, or political benefits to the groups from which it derives its
power. Hence, to disclose information about firm risks is a part of this social contract and it
should be rewarded. Therefore, a good reputation is a kind of remuneration for the firm’s
legitimacy. Consequently, our results contribute to the literature on legitimacy theory, and
indicate that disclosing more information about risks and uncertainties enhances the levels of
public recognition of the firm’s capabilities and output quality, as well as making the firm
more distinctive within their parallel group. In a nutshell, investors prefer firms that publish
all their information, be it positive or negative, to other firms that are less transparent.
Regarding control variables, the literature assumes that older and larger firms are more
interesting to build a good reputation (Deephouse, 1996 and Deephouse and Carter, 2005).
The empirical results of previous studies were not able to prove this theory. Philippe and
Durand (2008) notice no significant association between firm age and reputation. On the
contrary, Flatt and Kowalczyk (2011) find, as is the case in our results, a negative association
between firm age and reputation. Hannan and Freeman (1984) point out that increasing trust
takes time and older firms are more favored due to repeated interactions with other
organizations and environments. In addition, we educe that bigger firms are more reputable
than smaller ones, whereas Flatt and Kowalczyk (2011) find a negative relationship between
these two variables. With regard to the research and development expenditure variable, we
detect that expending more for research and development impacts reputation negatively. This
result is not harmonious with our expectation and with Hasseldine et al. (2005), who find a
positive link between research and development spending and reputation. In addition, our
results show that book to market ratio does not promote reputation.

4.2. Findings regarding “risk word” lists

After verifying that the most suitable model is the random effects model1, we run the random
effects regression for each word list separately (Uncertain, Opportunity, Negative, Weak
form, Legal and Government Regulations and Environmental and Social Responsibility
words).
Table 3 indicates that “uncertain”, “opportunity”, “weak” and “environmental & social
responsibility” word lists have a significant positive impact on reputation. Furthermore, the
results indicate that “negative” and “legal & government regulations” word lists do not affect
company reputation. This means that disclosing uncertain, opportunity and environmental and
social responsibility information has a positive impact on how firms are perceived. Disclosing
weak words and opportunity information impacts the firm’s reputation more than other lists.
The coefficients of the weak form list and the opportunity list are about 0.001 and 0.002
respectively. This means that firm’s reputation level increases by about 0.1% to 0.2% when
weak form and opportunity words disclosure increases by 1%, while the coefficients of
uncertain and environmental & social responsibility word lists are approximately 0.0006 and
0.0002 respectively. The impact of the other variables is robust for several word lists. Firm
size measured by market capitalization impacts company reputation positively for all word
lists. In addition, the negative effect of firm age remains significant for all lists except the
“weak form” list.
The negative sign of the research and development expenditures remains for all lists except
the opportunity and legal & government regulations lists. Market to book ratio significantly
and positively impacts a firm’s reputation for three lists (uncertain, negative and
environmental & social responsibility). Our created word lists have typically negative
implications in a financial sense; however, the importance of these lists differs according to

We obtained this result by performing Langrage and Hausman test; these tests are not tabulated.
the context and investor priority. Few academic papers have examined disclosure according to
investor priority, which makes interpreting our results difficult. Loughran and McDonald
(2013) find that a higher frequency of uncertain, weak, and negative words is associated with
higher volatility. This positive association reflects the importance of this information.
Surprisingly, our results show that the negative word list does not affect reputation; however,
the coefficient has positive sign. Previous studies have found a positive impact of
environmental disclosure and social responsibility on reputation (Hasseldine et al., 2005;
Orlitzky and Benjamin, 2001). Fred Garcia and Ewing (2008) find that the firms that cede the
litigation communication advantage to their adversaries may suffer significant reputational
harm. According to this result, the number of lawsuits and legal issues that companies face
may not impact reputation. Accordingly, investors consider companies that publish uncertain
information (uncertain and weak form word lists) and future opportunities to be transparent.
Moreover, environmental and social responsibility is an important concern for investors.
Hence, disclosing this kind of information will improve company image and, consequently,
reputation.
Table 3

The impact of “risk word” lists on reputation scores

Table 3 presents the results of the random effects model of equation (1) by using the word lists as an independent variable instead of total
risk:

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Scores is the Fortune magazine’s reputation scores, published with its list of “France’s Most Admired Companies”, Uncertain is the
uncertain word list, Opportunity is the opportunity word list, Negative is the negative word list, Weak is the weak form word list, L&G is the
legal and government regulations word list, Env & SR is the environmental and social responsibility word list, Lage is the log of number of
years since creation, Lmc is the log of annual market capitalization, mtb is the annual average of daily market to book ratio, LReDe is the log
of annual research and development expenditures.
* Significant at 10% level
** Significant at 5% level.
*** Significant at 1% level.
Scores Uncertain Opportunity Negative Weak L&G Env &SR

.00059*** .00107** .00029 .00156*** .00013 .00024*

RD
(0.002) (0.036) (0.168) (0.007) (0.337) (0.056)

-.26634* -.34650** -.42794*** -.21949 -.34337** -.40530***

Lage
(0.066) (0.037) (0.015) (0.149) (0.050) (0.014)

.30774*** .36084*** .390457*** .22753* .31770** .44775***

Lmc
(0.009) (0.010) (0.009) (0.063) (0.027) (0.004)
-.27856** -.10374 -.26314* -.27600** -.22262 -.26348*
LReDe
(0.032) (0.515) (0.081) (0.035) (0.150) (0.078)

-.02901* -.02151 -.02915* -.02476 -.02463 -.03273*

mtb
(0.089) (0.206) (0.081) (0.160) (0.160) (0.069)

7.01409*** 4.86326** 6.98112*** 7.64504*** 6.97066*** 6.46058***

Constant
(0.000) (0.039) (0.001) (0.000) (0.001) (0.002)

R-square 0.48 0.36 0.36 0.43 0.28 0.38

5. Additional analysis
We carry out a raft of additional analysis to ascertain whether risk reporting behavior differs
according to the firm’s risk level. To highlight such differentiation, we discriminate between
very risky firms and other firms. Thus, all the firms in our sample are ordered by
idiosyncratic risk level. We define very risky firms as those belonging to the highest decile of
risk ordered idiosyncratic risk. Furthermore, we took into account additional criteria to split
the sample and we obtained similar results. These results are not reported here but are
available upon request.

Looking at table 4, we notice that the positive impact of risk reporting on company reputation
no longer exists for very high-risk firms. In other words, this impact is significant only for
low-risk firms. By comparing the results of table 2 with the results of table 4, we perceive that
the results for entire sample suggest positive impact as same as the low-risk sample.

Table 4
The impact of total risk reporting on reputation scores according to idiosyncratic risk
Table 4 presents the results of the random effects model of the equation (1) for high-low risk firms.
*+,-./01 2 2 3401 2 567.01 2 58+01 2 53.4.01 2 89:01 ;01
Scores is the Fortune magazine’s reputation scores, published with its list of “France’s Most Admired
Companies”, RD is the total number of risks words, Lage is the log of the number of years since creation, Lmc
is log of annual market capitalization, LReDe is log of annual research and development expenditures, and mtb
is the annual average of daily market to book ratio. Wooldridge test is used to test the serial autocorrelation for
panel data.
* Significant at 10% level
** Significant at 5% level.
*** Significant at 1% level.
Variable Very high-risk firms low-risk firms

Scores Coef P-value Coef P-value

RD .0000374 0.697 .0000739** 0.020
Lage -.3163713** 0.028 -.3341193*** 0.010
Lmc .2829109** 0.028 .3726672*** 0.002

LReDe -.261189* 0.064 -.2520267** 0.049

mtb -.0211148 0.233 -.0260033 0.138

Constant 7.818128*** 0.000 6.5346*** 0.000

Wooldridge
0.111 0.132
test
R-square 0.22 0.40

In summary, our results suggest that risk reporting for risky firms does not impact firm
reputation. Company reputation reflects potential future performance (Fombrun and Riel,
1997; Delgado-García et al., 2013); it follows that firms at risk will not be preferable. In
other words, since most investors are risk-averse, company risk is a determining factor of the
impact of risk reporting on reputation. In general, firms can improve their image and enhance
their reputation by lowering financial risk (Hammond and Slocum, 1996; Delgado-García et
al., 2013). Accordingly, risk reporting for low-risk firms positively impacts reputation.
6. Robustness Test
We have shown that our findings are robust with regard to pooled OLS and random effects
models. In this section, we aim to test the robustness of our results with respect to alternative
measurements of the reputation variable. We use a dummy variable of reputation that equals 1
for those firms with a score in Fortune Magazine’s reputation scores, published with its list of
“France’s Most Admired Companies”, and 0 for those without a score. We estimate the
equation 2:
(2) Where RepD is the reputation dummy variable with a value of 1 for those firms with a
score in Fortune Magazine’s reputation scores, and 0 otherwise, RD is the log total number of
risk words, Lage is the log of the number of years since creation, Lmc is the log of annual
market capitalization, LReDe is the log of annual research and development expenditure, and
mtb is the annual average of the daily market to book ratio.

Table 5
The impact of total risk reporting on the reputation dummy variable
Table 5 presents the results of pooled logistic, conditional fixed effect logistic and random effects logistic regressions of
the equation (2):
(2)
Where RepD is the reputation dummy variable with a value of 1 for those firms with a score in Fortune Magazine’s
reputation scores, and 0 otherwise, RD is the total number of risk words, Lage is the log of the number of years since
creation, Lmc is the log of annual market capitalization, LReDe is the log of annual research and development
expenditure, and mtb is the annual average of the daily market to book ratio. The Lagrange multiplier test is used to test
the random effects model versus the pooling regression. The Hausman specification test is used to test the fixed effects
model versus the random effects model. The variance inflation factor is tabulated to test the autocorrelation for pooling
regression. The Wooldridge test is used to test the serial autocorrelation for panel data.
* Significant at 10% level
** Significant at 5% level.
*** Significant at 1% level.
Variable Pooled logistic Fixed effects logistic Random effects logistic

RepD Coef P.value Coef P.value Coef P.value

RD .00010* 0.066 .00083* 0.089 .00032* 0.088

Lage .24039 0.146 -9.29462 0.476 .79830 0.270

Lmc .34341** 0.039 -.54249 0.774 1.03564 0.147

LReDe .73722* 0.071 -2.50329 0.315 1.20648 0.114

mtb .26607*** 0.000 1.14770 0.215 .77652* 0.095

Constant -15.26049*** 0.000 -34.44942*** 0.004

The dependent variable is a dummy variable. We use three logistic regressions to estimate this
equation (pooled logistic, conditional fixed effects logistic and random effects logistic
regressions). The results are presented in table 5. We find that risk reporting positively
impacts company reputation for our three empirical models at a 10% level of significance.
The negative impact of control variables no longer exists. The pooled logistic model suggests
a positive and significant impact of firm value, research and development expenditure, and
market to book ratio on the firm’s reputation. The fixed effects logistic model displays
insignificant impact of all control variables on reputation. However, the random effects
logistic model suggests that market to book ratio has a significant and positive effect. In a
nutshell, the findings confirm the robustness of the positive impact of risk disclosure on firm
reputation. But they do not confirm the negative effect of the controls on reputation.

7. Conclusion
In this paper, we examine the impact of risk reporting on company reputation. Multiple
empirical models were used to explore this relationship (pooled OLS, fixed effects, random
effect, and pooled logistic, conditional fixed effects logistic and random effects logistic
models). We argue that risk reporting significantly and positively impacts company
reputation. In addition, our findings indicate that this positive impact still exists for low-risk
firms. However, risk disclosure does not have a significant effect on the firm’s reputation for
very high-risk firms. We found that our results are robust for alternative measurements of the
reputation variable and for several regression models. This study has implications for theory
and practice. First, we confirm that the impact of risk disclosure on reputation does not differ
from the impact of total firm disclosure (voluntary and mandatory). Second, our study
motivates the firms to disclose more risk information to promote their reputation. One
limitation of this study concerns the reputation variable. Since Fortune Magazine is not
specialized in the French market, only 33 French firms are listed in the magazine per year,
which impacted the number of observations used in this study.

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