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Corporate Reputation and the Multi-Disciplinary Field of Communication
Craig E. Carroll
New York University, USA
Corporate reputationâs development as a concept has been an interesting one to follow. Compared to most other communication concepts I am familiar with, it is one whose entry into the field began around the same time I was preparing to begin graduate work. Most of the other concepts I have enjoyed thinking about (organizational identity and identification, for instance) have rich histories with scholars and research that predate my time in the field.
When I was in high school and college, I enjoyed reading business histories and business reference books on organizational leadership and the best companies to work for. Peters and Watermanâs (1982) In Search of Excellence and Deal and Kennedyâs (1982) Corporate Culture were some of the early ones, and they happened to lead me into the study of organizational communication as an undergraduate. I also read various reference books on the best companies to work for so I could know where to look when pursuing summer internships, and I was fascinated by biographies written by company founders, entrepreneurs, and CEOs. Later in my career, I had the opportunity to work with business historian and entrepreneur Gary Hoover, founder of Hooverâs, Inc., in Austin, Texas, moving volumes of his business reference books online to the Internet and creating a searchable database of corporate histories updated on a daily basis.
The business books I read as an undergraduate were generally about topics other than corporate reputation, and I read them for other purposes: to learn about how to create visionary leadership, organizational excellence, and competitive corporate cultures, or simply how to get a job or an internship at one of these great companies. In these volumes, well-known companies and unknown companies were heralded in the anecdotes as case studies illustrating leadership, excellence, innovation, and employee and customer satisfaction. And with just one such mention, unknown companies were turned into corporate celebrities, offering best practices for wannabe entrepreneurs to master and held up as exemplars in textbooks for undergraduates in business, marketing, and communication who wanted to learn how to manage or communicate better. The focus, however, was never on the companies themselves, but on what the companies could offer or demonstrate in the way of codifiable knowledge about how things should be done.
Indeed, the companies mentioned, featured, or highlighted in the media during the 1980s were often used as examples to illustrate other points, topics, and ideas of concern: organizational excellence, corporate culture, innovation, or total quality management, for instance. The reputations of these companies (while the companies themselves might have disagreed) were not the focus of the articles or media attention.
In retrospect, these books helped create corporate reputations for the companies involved. Ironically, however, Waterman (1987) wrote later that many of the companies from In Search of Excellence were no longer in existence. But they had their heyday â and their reputations â for a time.
And in fact, it was in 1983 when Fortune Magazine produced a special topic issue devoted to the âMost Admired Companies of the Year.â Deephouse (2000) tells the story of how the special issue was not originally conceived as an annual issue and the methodology used in selecting and rating the firms was not very scientifically rigorous. Once the publication saw the sales of the special issue explode, however, then it began to take a more thoughtful, regimented, and methodical approach to the rankings. But scholarly interest in corporate reputation would not arise for several more years.
The scholarly article generally regarded as the tipping point that made corporate reputation a central topic of engagement was Fombrun and Shanleyâs (1990) investigation of Fortuneâs Most Admired Companies published in the Academy of Management Journal in 1990. Many other disciplines â economics, sociology, psychology, and marketing, for instance â had also engaged the concept, but they did have the same effect as this management article. Moreover, scholars of corporate social responsibility (CSR) (e.g., Chakravarthy, 1986; Conine and Madden, 1986; McGuire et al., 1988) had also used the Fortune ratings. What made the Fombrun and Shanley study different was that the previous studies focused on a single dimension of reputation (CSR) rather than the overall concept, and Fombrun and Shanley focused on multiple dimensions of reputation.
The next major development in the scholarly business literature devoted to corporate reputation studies was Fombrunâs (1996) treatise, Reputation: Realizing Value from the ComÂpany Image, issued by the Harvard Business Press. Many of the ideas still gaining currency today within what is now a field devoted to corporate reputation have their roots in this volume.
The following year saw additional major developments. First, New York University Stern School of Business Professor Charles Fombrun and Erasmus University/Rotterdam School of Management Professor Cees van Riel launched an international and interdisciplinary conference on corporate reputation, identity, and competitiveness made up of scholars from business, management, finance, accounting, marketing, and a number of subfields within the communication discipline.
The conference gave rise to a second development that year, the publication of the academic/practitioner journal Corporate Reputation Review, which has now evolved into a full scholarly journal. In the inaugural issue, Fombrun and Riel (1997) reviewed six academic business-related disciplines that had paid attention to corporate reputation: economics, strategic management, marketing, organizational behavior, sociology, and accounting. Communication, however, was not among them.
The third development, also that year, was van Rielâs (1997) argument that corporate communication, which at the time was viewed as an emerging field, should be responsible for corporate reputation as one of its duties. Van Riel (1995) had previously published Principles of Corporate Communication, but it was not until the international corporate reputation conference that management and communication researchers started to commingle.
Clearly, the wave of scholarly attention to corporate reputation can be credited to the business disciplines. The first work on corporate reputation began in public relations in the 1950s (Eells, 1959). Because the practice of public relations itself had such a poor reputation within the scholarly community and the concept of image had a poor image (Avenarius, 1993), the initial thinking on corporate reputation received little traction and was soon buried within the archives as scholars moved on to other endeavors. Indeed, scholarsâ devoting attention to helping organizations materialize more favorable images was frowned upon. For many, the concepts of organizational image and corporate reputation were conflated or treated as equivalents. But the separation and distinction of these two concepts (image = unflattering; reputation = more noble) over time enabled scholars to advance work on corporate reputation and scholars have not looked back.
As noted earlier, most of the literature on corporate repuÂtation resides within the business schools, evidenced by the recently released The Oxford Handbook of Corporate Reputation (Barnett and Pollock, 2012) featuring scholarly developments from a number of business-related disciplines, including management, sociology, economics, finance, history, marketing, and psychology. The communication discipline is noticeably absent leaving many central questions about the concept unaddressed. This handbook by Barnett and Pollock may satisfy those who are content with an understanding of corporate reputation from a management or organizational perspective, but for those who want to understand corporate reputation in greater depth, communication perspectives must be included.
Overview
The purpose of the present book is to come to a deeper understanding of corporate reputation â the concept, its antecedents, its dimensions, its consequences, and its measurement, management, and valuation â from the perspective of communication, and then, from multiple disciplinary perspectives found within.
This chapter begins by examining corporate reputation from a uniquely communication perspective. The first section defines corporate reputation from a communication perspective, identifies and reviews a number of ways that corporate reputation is conceptualized in practice, and then using the most basic communication model, draws attention to corporate reputation as an object of communication. Reframing corporate reputation from the perspective of multiple communication elements (messages, noise, and feedback) helps to more clearly see what communication brings to the study of corporate reputation.
The first section of this handbook introduces and describes what a number of subfields within communication offer for the understanding of corporate reputation. In previous writings, I have outlined the developments and contributions to corporate reputation from a mass communication perspective (Carroll, 2004, 2011). Van Riel (1995, 1997) has made similar contributions from the perspective of corporate communication. Still others (e.g., Hutton et al., 2001) have done so from the perspective of public relations. What is still lacking, however, is a comprehensive view from the perspective of communication, which is itself a wide-ranging field and considered by many still to be multidisciplinary. This is one purpose of this compendium.
Not all disciplines need to study corporate reputation, but corporate reputation scholars would be remiss not to consider the full variety of contributions that the study of commuÂnication can make to the phenomenon. We consider a few.
The second section of the book reviews a number of prominent and emerging theories that are communication related that deepen our insights into corporate reputation. Some are established, some are recent. The list is not exhaustive.
The third section of the book outlines the various corporate reputation attributes that are typically studied, and then reviews the literature on them for what the field of communication offers. The most commonly studied corporate reputation attributes are covered. The section concludes with a chapter on message design.
The fourth section of the book proposes new directions for corporate reputation research â new domains, unchartered territories.
Finally, the fifth section of the book addresses questions of research methodology, evaluation, and valuation.
The final chapter extracts key points and questions arising from the previous handbook chapters and plots out a research agenda for communication scholars interested in learning more about corporate reputation and offers corporate reputation scholars avenues through which to delve more deeply into communication literature. As much as I would like to claim that this is a definitive volume, at best it could be described as a snapshot of the state of the art on the study of corporate reputation from the field of communication.
Corporate Reputation as an Object of Communication
Corporate Reputation as Communication Messages
Organizations can have multiple types of corporate reputations. The AC4ID Reputation Framework (Carroll et al., 2011, p. 467) identifies a number of them:1
- The actual reputation (âwhat we really areâ) consists of the current attributes of the company, privately held by individuals. These may be tacit and unexplored.
- The communicated reputation (âwhat we say we areâ) whether through controllable media (advertising, marketing, public relations, or sponsorships) or uncontrollable media (word of mouth, news reports, commentary, or social media).
- The conceived (or perceived) reputation (âwhat we are seen to beâ) is how the company is seen by various constituents.
- The construed reputation (âwhat we think others seeâ) is top managementâs view of a(nother) stakeholderâs views (e.g., consumersâ or customersâ) of the organizationâs reputation.
- The covenanted reputation (âwhat the brand stands forâ) refers to what the brand promises and the stakeholders expect.
- The ideal reputation (âwhat we ought to beâ) consists of the optimum positioning of the organization in its market within a given time frame.
- The desired reputation (âwhat we wish to beâ) is analogous to the ideal reputation, but it resides in the hearts and minds of organizational leaders.
The framework by Carroll et al. (2011) illustrates the fundamental role that communication plays in the conceptualizing, messaging, and interpretation of corporate reputation. A corporate reputation is broadly defined as a widely circulated, oft-repeated message of minimal variation about an organization revealing something about the organizationâs nature. From an information-transfer perspective, the meaning of the widely shared, oft-repeated message of minimal variation resides with the sender. From a transactional-process perspective, the person or audience receiving the widely circulated, oft-repeated message of minimal variation constructs the meaning. Meanings include the thoughts in the mind of the sender and receiver as well as the interpretations each makes of the otherâs messages. Thus, as messages with minimal variation, corporate reputations can carry meanings that can vary from person to person or be widely shared and oft-repeated, giving them an air of objectivity. What each of ...
