Good acts earn credit only when outsiders know the cause they prove; without one, the same act reads as posturing.

The claim

When outsiders know what an organisation stands for, they read its good acts as proof of that cause and give it credit; when they do not, the same acts read as posturing. The case offered: two retailers announced environmental policies, and the one with a clear, believed cause received the credit while the earlier mover, whose cause had faded, was dismissed. Good conduct therefore does not accumulate reputation by itself: its value depends on whether there is a known cause for it to count as evidence of. The evidence is one pair of firms and a newspaper column, so this is a plausible reading, not a finding.