Mcdonald's Corporate Reputation Essay

Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) and McDonald’s are two representatives of fast food brands from the United States. These international companies have established a strong reputation successfully around the world. Meanwhile, these brands have different ranks in some reputation measurement systems, which caught the author’s attention. Thus, according to this start point, this report attempts to explore and compare the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Corporate Reputation (CR) of KFC and McDonald’s and to find out what factors contribute to these companies. After combining findings and analysis, the report discusses implications and limitation of the results.
2. Literature Review
2.1 Corporate Reputation (CR)
Corporate reputation influences

It is the net result of the interaction of a person’s beliefs, ideas, feelings, and impressions about the company. A company will not have a reputation – people hold reputations of the company”(Dowling, 1986).
There are three important aspects of a company that can affect the corporate reputation, which are image, identity and desired identity. It is important to define explicitly that all these three key elements and to know the difference among them.
Image: How external stakeholders see the

The internal perspective, which relates to as an identity, is a concern of human resources management(Chun, 2005). In time aspect, the image more concentrates on the public’s latest belief about the company. However, reputation differs from image and builds up through a long time with everything that is related to the company directly or indirectly. It has been claimed that a company’s external image commences with a company’s internal stakeholders, its employees, and how they perceive the company(Gray, 1986).
2.2 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
There is no unique definition for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), however, Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a concept whereby companies combine social and environmental concerns in their business operations and in their interaction with their stakeholders on a voluntary basis(Commission, 2002). “Corporate social responsibility (CSR) involves the conduct of a business so that it is economically profitable, law abiding, ethical and socially supportive. To be socially responsible then means that profitability and obedience to the law are the important conditions when discussing the firm’s ethics and the extent to which it supports the society in which it exists with contributions of money, time, and talent” (Carroll,