Chapter 30: Reputation Management: Building and Maintaining Reputation through Communications
The purpose of this chapter is to examine the role of communications in corporate reputation brand- building. We first provide background on reputation and the role that communications can play on its behalf. Our primary focus is on managing stakeholder expectations. Our principal perspective is that of the chief communications officer (CCO). We then address the context for corporate communications and reputation management, with particular emphasis on external and internal challenges to effective communications. Under this setting, we look at three underexamined phenomena: the willingness to disclose and to be open to feedback (i.e., managing reputational intelligence); the awareness that companies have multiple reputations; and the desirability of managing organizational-constituent expectations about the congruence among the multiple reputations.We close with our perspective on the roles of substance (actual corporate behavior) and communications in building and maintaining reputation. Finally, we offer some questions management should ask in the course of considering and undertaking reputation-directed communications.
Craig Carroll Biography Steve Greyser Biography Elliot Schreiber Biography |