Corporate environmental reputation: Exploring its definitional landscape

Abstract Despite its growing strategic importance, the concept of Corporate Environmental Reputation (CER) still lacks a specific definition and content delimitation in the literature. This fact, together with its difficult differentiation from other similar constructs, hides the key role of this construct in the connection between management and environmental studies and in the development of corporate environmental management strategies. To address this issue, in this research, we develop a literature review on CER conceptualisation, operationalisation and measurement, and analyse its main effects on firm competitiveness and performance drawing on the Institutional Theory and the resource‐based view. As a result, we propose a CER definition, highlighting its main characteristics and drivers and delimitating it in relation to closely related concepts such as green corporate image and corporate environmental legitimacy.