When is good news bad and vice versa? The Fortune rankings of America's most admired companies

Abstract We use increases and decreases in the ranking scores of Fortune's Most Admired Companies to test the proposition that media shocks can increase (decrease) the value of a manager's reputational capital and, thus, enhance (diminish) his power to extract corporate resources for private benefit at the expense of shareholders. Consistent with the proposition increases (decreases) in scores are associated with stock price decreases (increases). And, CEOs whose firms experience increases (reductions) in scores experience increases (reductions) in compensation and in job tenure, and their firms undertake more (fewer) acquisitions and the acquisitions are less (more) value increasing.