Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce a method that the authors call stakeholder cross-impact analysis (SCIA), which is aimed at analyzing how a given set of stakeholders influence one another and also how such stakeholders relate to a given set of issues. Design/methodology/approach – The authors first identify, in the current literature, a lack of analytical tools for assessing mutual influences among stakeholders. The authors then identify cross-impact analysis, a method that was initially developed in the field of futures research, as a suitable method to be applied in the present research. Its application, which the authors call SCIA, is described in detail through a fictitious case. Findings – SCIA permits to assess the direction and the strength of relationships between stakeholders. Furthermore, it allows for the classification of stakeholders based on their level of dependence and influence on others. Also, it is possible to integrate SCIA with social network analysis in order to understand the degree to which stakeholders agree on how issues influence one another, as well as to identify which issues most stakeholders consider to be central and which stakeholders have the most shared opinion on how issues are related. Practical implications – This method can be used, along with traditional segmentation techniques, by corporate communication and public relations practitioners in order to gain a more sophisticated understanding of the complexity of organizations’ environments. Originality/value – SCIA represents a much-needed and novel way of understanding the complexity of organizations’ environments.

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Organizational reputation has been an important concept in management research for more than 30 years. In this essay, we elaborate on the relationship between the notion of time and organizational reputation. We first review research on reputation in strategic management, highlighting the importance of the construct and how time has traditionally been conceptualized. We then build on existing organizational research on time as a way to advance the understanding of reputation as a more processual and socially constructed phenomenon; we argue that reputation formation, maintenance, and repair could be understood as a form of socio-symbolic work. Based on this foundation, we set out a research agenda providing a path for the investigation of the temporal features of reputation and reputation work.

This paper explores how the degree of underlying ambivalence toward a certain organization influences the stability of people's reputation judgments when new information is provided as well as how this information, in turn, influences people's sense of ambivalence. Results from one experiment demonstrate that individuals who are highly ambivalent toward an organization display a greater amount of change in reputational judgments when exposed to new information (either positive or negative) compared with those who are less ambivalent. The results also indicate that ambivalence scores change significantly after people are exposed to new information, suggesting that people use new information to diminish their sense of ambivalence when possible. Taken together, the results of the study suggest novel theoretical and practical implications for reputation management. Corporate Reputation Review (2015) 18, 87-98.