Reputation Management in Complex Environments—A Comparative Study of University Organizations

Christensen, Tom; Gornitzka, Åse

doi:10.1057/s41307-016-0010-z

Cited by 53 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Tirronen 2015). Competing for uniqueness raises solidarity questions in universities, because academics are more reluctant to share information and ideas with each other in a competitive situation, and this is in contradiction with universities' traditional moral symbols, such as openness, trust and care (Christensen and Gornitzka 2017). However, it is yet to be seen how profiling activities will affect Finnish higher education.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting the five problems of public sector organisations and reputation management—the perspective of higher education practitioners and ex-academics

Kuoppakangas

Suomi

Stenvall

et al. 2019

Int Rev Public Nonprofit Mark

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The extant literature has identified five problems related to public sector organisations and their reputation management: politics, consistency, charisma, uniqueness and excellence. This study examines whether and how the problems of reputation management occur in public higher education by collecting qualitative data from 40 interviews. The study sheds light on the perceptions of a group that has been largely neglected in previous studies: namely, doctorates who have exited academia, or ex-academics. In addition to ex-academics, interviewees also included their employers and university leadership. The analysis follows a thematic qualitative approach with an abductive logic. The study provides empirical evidence of the content of the problems in higher education and discusses recent related transformations in higher education. The findings show that, in terms of reputation management, the most challenging matters appear to be knowledge transfer and the applicability of research to practice. These challenges are cross-cutting and apparent from different angles across all five problems of reputation management. This study contributes to the academic literature on reputation management in the public sector by applying prior conceptual categorizations and employing a comprehensive set of empirical data with a fresh perspective. The study presents implications for higher education policy makers and managers and emphasises the need for university management to minimise the duality between different types of workers, as this duality threatens university reputations in general and consistency in particular.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting the five problems of public sector organisations and reputation management—the perspective of higher education practitioners and ex-academics

Kuoppakangas

Suomi

Stenvall

et al. 2019

Int Rev Public Nonprofit Mark

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…As noted earlier, the relevance of reputational concerns has been demonstrated in driving a variety of regulatory behaviors, including the supply of regulatory outputs (Maor and Sulitzeanu‐Kenan ), the duration of drug approval (Carpenter ) or of enforcement decisions (Maor and Sulitzeanu‐Kenan ), enforcement practices (Etienne ), regulatory risk assessment practices (Rimkutė ), turf management and regulatory cooperation (Maor ; Moynihan ), strategic use of communications (Gilad, Maor, and Bloom ; Maor, Gilad, and Bloom ), bureaucratic demand for public participation (Moffitt , ), and accountability and political control (Busuioc and Lodge , ). Moreover, the value of the reputational perspective has been demonstrated not only in the regulation context but also with respect to public sector organizations in a variety of forms and contexts, including health care (Wæraas and Sataøen ), higher education (Christensen and Gornitzka ; Christensen, Gornitzka, and Ramirez ), social security (Christensen and Lodge ), police and border management (Busuioc ; Christensen and Lægreid ), and different levels of government—from municipal organizations (Lockert et al ; Wæraas ) to ministries and/or national‐level departments (Lee and Van Ryzin ; Luoma‐Aho ). To an overwhelming degree, empirical studies in this tradition have tended to be either qualitative in‐depth case studies that try to reconstruct reputational processes (e.g., drawing on thick description, historical data, and/or interview data) or quantitative studies that focus on measuring specific reputational aspects (such as “reputational threats” and regulatory responses) rather than organizational reputation as such: “None of the current bureaucratic reputation scholars measure reputation per se, but rather reputational threats as manifested in the media” (Maor , 86).…”

Section: Reputation In the Public Sectormentioning

confidence: 99%

A Multidimensional Reputation Barometer for Public Agencies: A Validated Instrument

Overman

Busuioc

Wood

2020

Public Administration Review

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Reputation is of growing interest for the study of public bureaucracies, but a measurement that can discern between the subdimensions of reputation and is validated on real-life audiences has remained elusive. The authors deductively build, test, and cross-validate a survey instrument through two surveys of 2,100 key stakeholders of the European Chemicals Agency, the European Union chemicals regulator. This empirical tool measures an agency's reputation and its building blocks. This scale represents an important contribution to reputation literature, as it allows scholars to distinguish and measure which aspects of reputation public organizations are "known for" and build their claim to authority on, as well as how the profiles of public organizations differ. The authors find that direct stakeholder contact with the agency is necessary for stakeholders to be able to evaluate the separate dimensions of reputation independently. Evidence for Practice• This study equips practitioners with a reputation barometer tailored to the public sector. It allows them to measure the reputation of their organization, in a differentiated fashion, among different stakeholder groups. • While public organizations increasingly engage in reputation management activities, a potential caveat that emerges from our exercise is that managers might be steering in non-astute directions. While our study shows that, as for private actors, "performance matters," procedural and moral aspects also weigh heavily in the eyes of stakeholders when it comes to public regulators. • To secure a positive organizational image and the authority crucial for public agencies to operate, the performance management turn in the public sector may need to be supplemented by an enhanced organizational attention to procedural and moral aspects.

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“…In such instances, communication departments seem to take on a role as mediators between the institutional leadership and the often complex and quite fragmented heartland of the university. This function might be a reflection of the institutional characteristics of the universities studied, as comprehensive and large universities are over-represented in our sample, and because the "brands" of these universities are quite established within the Nordic region (Christensen and Gornitzka 2016), having the potential consequence that the institutions do not prioritize external branding and marketing activities to the same degree as their US and UK counterparts (see also Elken et al 2016). Nevertheless, the weight given to and the amount of time and energy devoted to internal coordination stand in contrast to the external functions one would expect dominated the agenda of these departments (Cornelissen 2014).…”

Section: Discussion and Concluding Remarksmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Compliance with environmental demands can also be linked to normative and cultural expectations to secure legitimacy and acceptance (Drori et al 2013). For universities, this relate to situations where the society expects them to become more "complete" and "real" organizations (Christensen and Gornitzka 2016;Krücken and Meier 2006;Maassen et al 2012); in order to signal these characteristics, special organizational units, such as communication departments, would be developed as a means to fulfill specific expectations. Establishment in such instances is not primarily a functional need due to specific tasks, but symbolic action to signal particular status.…”

Section: Unpacking the Development Of New Administrative Organizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The painters behind the profile: the rise and functioning of communication departments in universities

2018

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It has been argued that universities are changing into becoming more professional as organizations, and this paper investigates this claim by exploring the emergence and tasks of communication departments in modern universities. Examination of universities in six Baltic and Nordic countries shows that communication departments are working closely with the institutional leadership and that communication is increasingly seen as a strategic function in the universities. This can position communication departments as a central internal coordinator between various organizational units and processes. While the findings indicate support for the assumption about more professional universities, those working within a communication department seem to have a broad and varied background and cannot be said to have developed a specific professional identity in all the institutions. However, our findings do indicate increasing contact and close relations between communication specialists across university borders which may result in a stronger professional identity over time.

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Reputation Management in Complex Environments—A Comparative Study of University Organizations

Cited by 53 publications

References 31 publications

Revisiting the five problems of public sector organisations and reputation management—the perspective of higher education practitioners and ex-academics

Revisiting the five problems of public sector organisations and reputation management—the perspective of higher education practitioners and ex-academics

A Multidimensional Reputation Barometer for Public Agencies: A Validated Instrument

The painters behind the profile: the rise and functioning of communication departments in universities

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