reputational laundering


reputational laundering – the act of appearing to do good publicly in order to offset a negative image. a technique usually employed by individuals or corporations who have made their money in a morally questionable fashion and who wish to appear to have a moral conscience.

reputational laundering often comes in the form of corporate social responsibility, where a relatively trivial sum of profits are donated by the corporation to fund socially oriented activities in order to suggest that the corporation is socially responsible.

an example, often sited, would be major oil companies giving charitable funds to communities in the nigeria delta whose original livelihoods they were implicit in destroying through the extraction of crude oil.

however the practice of reputational laundering is by no means exclusive to corporations. many morally bankrupt individuals donate money to charity in order that they are seen to care about social or environmental issues. as an added benefit to their undeservedly improved public image they also enjoy significant tax breaks on their donations.
given that it has just paid record fines for insider trading, pj gorman’s effort to support a youth programme in the inner city is little more than reputational laundering.

Read Also:

  • sypeing

    when someone forgets to hit the “k” in skypeing. luke keeps asking me if i am sypeing.

  • need more crit

    when mike morales needs more critical damage to rekt the enemy opposition. me: hey mike did you hear about the new patch update? mike: i need more crit!!!

  • kagehina

    a connection of 2 words: kageyama and hinata. to define someone is invincible. you’re kagehina to my heart!

  • bhenchod

    it’s like the exclamation point at the middle or end of every sentence for people mostly from south asia. david: hey man how you doing? amir: not good bhenchod david: woah bhenchod amir: what bhenchod? it means the one who f-cks his sister kris is a real behenchod . yes, the word does mean sisterf-cker, […]

  • Pulled an Andrei

    doing something very stupid unexpectedly also look at andrei move person 1: oh man, you just crashed the whole stack of jenga before we even started playing! person 2: you just pulled an andrei! that’s two shots! andrei: oh…ok


Disclaimer: reputational laundering definition / meaning should not be considered complete, up to date, and is not intended to be used in place of a visit, consultation, or advice of a legal, medical, or any other professional. All content on this website is for informational purposes only.