Organizational identity threats and aspirations in reputation management

Organizational Reputation in the Public Administration: A Systematic Literature Review

“…The performative dimension is salient in all antecedent and outcome types. Several antecedents of OR analyze the perceived performance to build or maintain a positive reputation (e.g., Doering et al 2019), while the outcomes studied are related to reputation as a means to enhance organizational performance (e.g., Krause and Douglas 2005). Moreover, moral reputation is the least studied dimension regarding both outcomes and antecedents.…”

Why do public agencies seek accountability? The role of audiences

“…Consequently, an agency will presumably seek accountability towards an audience that best fits with the agency's motivation. Second, empirical studies have examined different relationships-for instance, agencies and society at large (Koop, 2014), agencies and societal stakeholders (Schillemans, 2011), municipalities and their peers (Doering et al, 2021) and political executives and citizens/councilors (Karsten, 2015)-and found different dominant mechanisms. Consequently, the multiplicity of dominant mechanisms identified in the literature could be an artifact of the different relationships-and, relatedly, different practices-that have been researched.…”

“…Still others have pointed at the importance of account‐giving for maintaining a positive reputation (Busuioc & Lodge, 2016, 2017; Doering et al, 2021). These authors stress that account‐giving is instrumental for building audience support and tracking and managing the expectations of audiences .…”

“…A notable and counter‐intuitive development in this regard is that agencies—as well as other kinds of organizations operating at arm's length from government (Schwabenland & Hirst, 2018)—across the world and at both local, national and supranational levels have voluntarily adopted practices to enhance their accountability. Studies have documented voluntary accountability among a wide variety of public sector organizations, including national (Koop, 2014; Magill, 2009) and supranational (Arras & Braun, 2018; Busuioc & Jevnaker, 2020; Wood, 2018) (quasi‐)autonomous agencies, municipalities (Doering et al, 2021; Karsten, 2015) and social service providers (Romzek et al, 2012). Voluntary accountability reportedly relies on a variety of mechanisms, including self‐initiated public consultation procedures in the absence of/beyond statutory responsibilities (Arras & Braun, 2018), (interactive) websites and social media (Bertot et al, 2012), voluntary external reviews (Doering et al, 2021), actor‐initiated requests for public/parliamentary hearings (Busuioc, 2013), self‐regulation (Magill, 2009) and consultative forums (Arras & Braun, 2018; Busuioc & Jevnaker, 2020).…”

Enacting Accountability Under Populist Pressures: Theorizing the Relationship Between Anti-Elite Rhetoric and Public Accountability

“…Instead of privileging the formal rules and processes that structure accountability relationships, this literature directs attention to the complex entanglement of obligations, audiences, and concerns about legitimacy. In particular, it has shown that effective accountability relationships are underpinned by reputational concerns and "felt accountability" (Hall et al, 2017) on the part of individual agents as account-givers, and on the part of the account-holders (Busuioc & Lodge, 2016;Overman et al, 2021) or any other "venues of influence" that enact account-holding (Waterman et al, 1998) In terms of reputational concerns, several studies have demonstrated that the way in which agents and account-holders perceive their reputation affects how they fulfill their accountability obligations (e.g., Busuioc & Lodge, 2016;Carpenter, 2010;Doering et al, 2021). Both principals and agents are concerned with their reputation: a good reputation can build bureaucratic authority beyond legal boundaries; whereas reputational threats risk eroding such authority and discretion (Carpenter, 2010).…”