Contextual Factors Surrounding Reputation Damage With Potential Implications for Reputation Repair

Abstract

We explore the contextual factors surrounding reputation damage and their potential implications for reputation repair. We propose a model that examines how (1) the multidimensional property of reputation, (2) organizational age, (3) the diversity of market segments served by the organization, and (4) third parties influence a firm's perceived capability to cope with a reputation-damaging event and the external visibility of the event, which, in turn, determine the difficulty of the firm's reputationrepairing activities.

Changing Organizational Reputation in Management Consulting

“…The reputation literature which has focused on change has tended to emphasize organizational responses to reputational crises (Rhee and Valdez, 2009), for example through impression management approaches such as PR, advertising, re-branding and leadership changes (Carter and Dukerich, 1998;Rindova and Fombrun, 1999). Rhee and Kim (2012) have referred to this as 'superficial' responses in contrast to 'substantive' responses which involve large-scale reorganizations to centralize control or asset sales.…”

“…While there is a body of research exploring how organizations are impacted by and respond to reputational crises (Rhee and Haunschild, 2006;Rhee and Valdez, 2009), there has been little research on organizations who are proactively seeking to change their reputations as opposed to reactively responding to a crisis. This is an important oversight given the rapidly changing business landscape and the constant demand for established organizations to offer new products and services to distinguish themselves from their competitors.…”

Nascent ventures competing for start-up capital: Matching reputations and investors

“…A performance-based reputation is a multidimensional construct (Fombrun and Shanley, 1990;Rhee and Valdez, 2009) that besides past market success can be based on many signals from many different sources. These signals include contests (Rao, 1994), awards (Anand and Watson, 2004;Gemser, Leenders and Wijnberg, 2008) reviews (Basuroy, Chatterjee and Ravid, 2003;Eliashberg and Shugan, 1997), ratings (Podolny, 1993), and even the mere volume of media attention (Pollock and Rindova, 2003;Rindova, Petkova and Kotha, 2007).…”

“…Reputations, however, are multidimensional constructs (Fombrun and Shanley, 1990;Rhee and Valdez, 2009), and the evaluation of reputations can vary across different stakeholders (Fisher and Reuber, 2007). In this study we therefore distinguish between different types of reputational signals.…”

“…Signals that can be used as proxies of missing information are important determinants of the outcome of competitive processes (Shapiro, 1983;Podolny, 1993;Rindova, Petkova, Williamson and Sever, 2005). For producers, reputational signals based on past performance (Fombrun and Shanley, 1991;Rindova, Petkova and Kotha, 2007) (Tyebjee and Bruno, 1981;Gorman and Sahlman, 1989;Muzyka et al, 1996;Franke et al, 2006Franke et al, , 2008.A performance-based reputation is a multidimensional construct (Fombrun and Shanley, 1990;Rhee and Valdez, 2009) that besides past market success can be based on many signals from many different sources. These signals include contests 15 (Rao, 1994), awards (Anand and Watson, 2004;Gemser, Leenders and Wijnberg, 2008) reviews (Basuroy, Chatterjee and Ravid, 2003; Shugan, 1997), ratings (Podolny, 1993), and even the mere volume of media attention (Pollock and Rindova, 2003;Rindova, Petkova and Kotha, 2007).…”