Reputação corporativa, governança corporativa e estrutura de propriedade: uma análise da empresa brasileira

Abstract

Corporate governance involves mechanisms that help align interests and protect investors, so the adoption of these mechanisms can be considered a sign of corporate responsibility. The ownership structure, in turn, can also influence the judgment that stakeholders make about the company, considering that it signals how the company's control structure is defined, which can have an impact on its decision-making process. This study aims to analyze the potential influence of corporate governance and ownership structure on corporate reputation. To carry out the study, a sample of 56 companies participating in the Merco and Reptrak reputation rankings in the period 2013-2018. The corporate reputation was approximated by the metrics developed by these two institutions. Corporate governance was measured by building an index (CGIndex) composed of 28 corporate governance practices. Regarding the ownership structure, it was evaluated based on the concentration of voting rights and the identity of the controlling shareholder, categorized into three groups: majority, shared and dispersed. Data analysis was performed using descriptive statistics, test for difference between means, correlation and linear regression. The results show that Brazilian companies have a low reputation when analyzed by the Merco ranking and a slightly above average reputation when analyzed by the Reptrak ranking. This initial result signals a possible controversy between these two indices. In fact, the analysis showed that the Merco and Reptrak rankings are not correlated. The corporate governance index has an average of approximately 63%, indicating that the Brazilian companies that make up these rankings are concerned with corporate governance practices. The results also show that such companies have a high concentration of voting rights in the hands of the first shareholder. Regarding the nature of the main shareholder, it was observed that the majority control represents 49% of Brazilian companies, followed by shared control (34.5%) and dispersed control (16.5%). The results demonstrate that corporate governance has no influence on the reputation of Brazilian companies, whereas the concentration of ownership in the hands of the first shareholder has had a negative influence on the reputation of Brazilian companies analyzed by Reptrak. In addition, the identity of the shareholding control had an impact on the reputation of the companies evaluated by Merco. Majority control had a negative influence on corporate reputation, while shared control was able to positively affect the reputation of companies. We conclude that the ownership structure of Brazilian companies is an important aspect that signals decision-making and is therefore capable of affecting corporate reputation.