Managing Corporate Reputation

Abstract

{Excerpt} Newly minted approaches to corporate reputation are already obsolete. Beyond gaining control of issues, crises, and corporate social responsibility, organizations need to reconceptualize and manage reputation in knowledge-based economies. Reputation is not about likability: it is the aggregate estimation in which a person or entity is held by individuals and the public against a criterion, based on past actions and perceptual representation of future prospects, when compared to other persons or entities. Since we cannot develop a personal relationship with every entity in the world, the regard in which a party is held is a proxy indicator of predictability and the likelihood the party will meet expectations, a useful earmark that facilitates sense and decision making against alternatives. Every day, through what amounts to a distributed means of social control, we assess and judge with effect the competence of individuals and organizations to fulfill expectations based on such social evaluation.