Reputation Management

Building and Protecting Your Company's Profile in a Digital World

Andrew Hiles

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Information
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781849300421
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781849300568
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Managing and understanding the value of an organization's reputation is essential in the digital age, where the slightest negative incident can go "viral" and quickly become a major PR containment exercise. Reputation management is an integrated part of any organization's risk management plan, so this intangible yet vital asset has to be assessed, managed, and protected.

Reputation Management provides advice on how to define and value your organization's reputation and techniques for maintaining and protecting it from risks that may arise on a daily basis. This book also covers where the responsibility for reputation management lies, risk identification, governance aspects, and containment and mitigation of a negative event.

Aimed at the risk manager, corporate communicator, business strategist, auditor, and senior manager, Reputation Management covers:

* The governance of reputation
* Measuring and managing reputation
* Managing and monitoring external perceptions
* Reputation crisis management
* Strategic planning and reputation
* Reputation and investors

Reputation and Strategic Issue Management

by John Dalton

London School of Public Relations, UK

This Chapter Covers

An overview of the relationship between reputation and issue management.

The importance and context of issue management as a tool of reputation management and strategic business planning.

The impact of social media in managing issues.

The value of issue analysis to decision making and business insights.

The structure and process of issue management.

The interconnection between issue management, risk, and crisis management.

Introduction

What is the purpose of a business? According to Peter Drucker, “the purpose of a business is to create a customer.” Such a statement makes good sense, as without customers there can be no functional business. Essentially, if the purpose of any business is to fulfill some human need within society, then that business, whatever its nature, should take an active interest in its own reputation as a way of securing its future prospects. Central to building and defending a sound organizational reputation is the capability to be proactive and to recognize and evaluate potential and ongoing risks (issues). Legitimacy and transparency are at the heart of issue management, and whether the messages developed and delivered through corporate communications are credible to stakeholders. If reputation can be viewed as a form of assessment of a corporation’s behavior and performance, then understanding and identifying risks and issues—that may at a later stage damage this valuable asset—must be an active part of any reputation management structure and process.

Most organizations recognize the importance of reputation to their organizations, yet few have dedicated structures and people in place to oversee the critical function. In the author’s opinion, we are witnessing the era of a reputation economy, whereby economic sustainability is based less on what you claim (typically through a mixture of mass media and social media) and more on what you actually do, i.e. your accountability and consistent delivery of brand values. Concurrent with this is a shift in values and public attitudes towards corporations and an increasing ethical overlap between business and personal morality.

Consumers now expect organizations to act in a fair and reasonable manner, and not only to make a brand/organizational promise, but to deliver it. Faced with increasing market volatility and complexity, corporations are realizing the need to have structures and processes in place to ensure that risk issues do not evolve into nasty reputational surprises, damaging brand equity, which can quickly result in loss of shareholder confidence and, in the long term, profitability. The hasty demise in July 2011 of the British newspaper, the News of the World, is a good example of an issue that rapidly became a crisis, with devastating consequences.

Risk and issue management are by their nature proactive so, in order to build, defend, and maintain a good reputation, corporations need a series of key interdependent competencies to manage reputation risks:

Strategic risk and issue management.

Effective brand/marketing communications and message development.

Corporate identity and image development.

Crisis management planning.

Innovation and communication of change.

Sustainability and corporate social responsibility.

Ethics and regulatory/compliance.

Is the Management of Issues Important?

Issues and their management are similar to the way in which we perceive our health. Most of us care about our health and fear long-term diseases such as cancer, yet many of us indulge in lifestyles that can increase the risk of exposure to serious illness. Interestingly, a simple search on the internet quickly reveals the importance of crisis management in the business lexicon. Type in “issue analysis” or “issue management” and there is significantly little presence on the web. Why? Because most people in business habitually use the terms “issue” and “issue management,” yet there is poor understanding of how issues can be properly managed.

Conversely, the term “crisis” is more popular in terms of awareness, training, and consequences. A crisis evokes fear and potentially threatens the very existence of a business. The simple explanation is that issues, like threats from illness, do not command our immediate attention. Our minds have not evolved for such long-term planning, as we tend to look for short-term reward and security. In essence, executives understand the importance of risks and issues but seem to have a cognitive bias against them, primed as we are for “fight or flight,” the classic crisis scenario. Even when risks and their management are advanced, such as enterprise risk management (ERM) systems within the financial sector, elements such as reputational risk are not adequately dealt with.

In his book, Managing, Mintzberg pointed out that businesses are often over-led and under-managed. Organizations place too much emphasis on preparing and training for crisis response, and far too little on establishing formal structures and trainin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Contributors
• How Firms Should Fight Rumors
• Governance and Reputation Risk
• The CEO’s Role in Reputation Management
• Framing Reputation: Vague Concept or Measurable Business Asset?
• Smart Use of Reputation Capital: How to Benefit from Different Reputation Investment Strategies
• Engaging Your Stakeholders: How To Make Allies of Investors and Activists
• A Holistic Approach to Stakeholder Relations to Build Reputation and Mitigate Reputation Risk
• Managing Reputational Risk: Business Journalism
• How the Corporate Website Has Become the Hub for Online Reputation Building
• Digital Reputation Management
• Digital Strategies for Enhancing Reputation
• Long-Term Reputation Effects in the Global Financial Industry: How the Financial Crisis Has Fundamentally Changed Reputation Dynamics
• An Approach to Understanding Reputation Risk in Financial Services
• The Cost of Reputation: The Impact of Events on a Company’s Financial Performance
• Sustainability and Corporate Reputation: Who Needs Reputation When You’ve Got Cash Flows?
• Measuring Brand Reputation
• Measuring Corporate Reputation: Methodology, Findings, and Practical Implications of the BMAC Surveys
• Reputation and Strategic Issue Management
• Crisis Management and Strategies for Dealing with Crisis
• Managing Your Reputation through Crisis: Opportunity or Threat?
• Imprint