By: Carl Da-Costa-Greaves
What is Corporate Reputation?
There are 3 elements to reputation, known as the reputational radar.
• Brand Reputation – how the public perceives a brand.
• Organisational reputation – what the public think about the ‘organisation’ as oppose to the brand. For example, Unilever PLC has a house of brands and also has individual sub brands. Therefore the public reputation of the company can be different to the reputation of the individual brands.
• Stakeholder reputation – the reputation that stakeholders have of the brand or the company that they are dealing with. (Stakeholder = person group or another organisation that has a direct or indirect stake in a company.)
Therefore when we talk about reputation we also need to be clear about whose reputation, from the list above, that we are talking about.
Definition of Reputation
There are lots of different definitions of what reputation might consist of but the main point is that corporate reputation has to be earned. The company can create an image, but whether that image will lead to a reputation which is the same as the image, or a positive reputation, will depend on what the organisation does.
• “Reputation is the sum values that stakeholders attribute to a company, based on their perception and interpretation of the image that the company communicates over time” John Dalton, Managing Corporate Reputation.
• “Reputation is the principal means through which a market economy deals with consumer ignorance” Professor John Kay.
Corporate Reputation Framework
Corporate Reputation is the endpoint in a chain, see image above. A chain that comes from the corporate image, with the corporate image coming from the corporate identity or brand; which will in turn come from the personality that the organisation is trying to create. All of these elements are wrapped up in the corporate communications that the company is producing.
Benefits of Corporate Reputation
Corporate Reputation acts as a lynchpin for all of these concepts in the reputation framework, with lots of things feeding into it such as the image and reputation and what the organisation does to enhance the reputation. The benefits of having a solid reputation are things like trustworthiness and credibility.
Corporate Reputation determines the levels of credibility, trustworthiness, responsibility and reliability that a stakeholder has with the organisation.
It’s also worth noting that an organisation may own a brand and may also try to create their image around that brand, but it is the stakeholder that owns and creates the reputation.
In summary, it doesn’t really matter what a company does, because what determines the organisation’s reputation is what the stakeholder’s think of it; managing Corporate Reputation is therefore all about managing the stakeholder’s perceptions.
What is Corporate Reputation?
There are 3 elements to reputation, known as the reputational radar.
· Brand Reputation – how the public perceives a brand.
· Organisational reputation – what the public think about the ‘organisation’ as oppose to the brand. For example, Unilever PLC has a house of brands and also has individual sub brands. Therefore the public reputation of the company can be different to the reputation of the individual brands.
· Stakeholder reputation – the reputation that stakeholders have of the brand or the company that they are dealing with. (Stakeholder = person group or another organisation that has a direct or indirect stake in a company.)
Therefore when we talk about reputation we also need to be clear about whose reputation, from the list above, that we are talking about.
Definition of Reputation
There are lots of different definitions of what reputation might consist of but the main point is that corporate reputation has to be earned. The company can create an image, but whether that image will lead to a reputation which is the same as the image, or a positive reputation, will depend on what the organisation does.
· “Reputation is the sum values that stakeholders attribute to a company, based on their perception and interpretation of the image that the company communicates over time” John Dalton, Managing Corporate Reputation.
· “Reputation is the principal means through which a market economy deals with consumer ignorance” Professor John Kay.
Corporate Reputation Framework
Corporate Reputation is the endpoint in a chain, see image above. A chain that comes from the corporate image, with the corporate image coming from the corporate identity or brand; which will in turn come from the personality that the organisation is trying to create. All of these elements are wrapped up in the corporate communications that the company is producing.
Benefits of Corporate Reputation
Corporate Reputation acts as a lynchpin for all of these concepts in the reputation framework, with lots of things feeding into it such as the image and reputation and what the organisation does to enhance the reputation. The benefits of having a solid reputation are things like trustworthiness and credibility.
Corporate Reputation determines the levels of credibility, trustworthiness, responsibility and reliability that a stakeholder has with the organisation.
It’s also worth noting that an organisation may own a brand and may also try to create their image around that brand, but it is the stakeholder that owns and creates the reputation.
In summary, it doesn’t really matter what a company does, because what determines the organisation’s reputation is what the stakeholder’s think of it; managing Corporate Reputation is therefore all about managing the stakeholder’s perceptions.
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