Reputation Management. The Key to Successful Public Relations and Corporate Communication

Citation

Romenti, S. (2013), "Reputation Management. The Key to Successful Public Relations and Corporate Communication", Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 161-164. https://doi.org/10.1108/13563281311294182

1 Introduction

Many scholars argue that the aim of corporate communication and public relations should be strengthening corporate reputation, which is often correlated to competitiveness, productivity and financial success. In other words, when the main goal consists of enhancing corporate reputation, corporate communication supports the achievement of strategic organizational goals.

Doorley and Garcia state the argument clearly at the beginning “[…] everything communicators do should be respectful of, if not geared toward, the long‐term interest of the organization” (p. XI). This means that public relations, corporate and organizational communication should shift from tactical, short‐term objectives to strategic, long‐term ones.

Reputation Management is an edited book, comprising 15 chapters, written by leading practitioners in the field. The volume represents an excellent mix of conceptual and empirical elements: from how‐to‐do principles to practical examples, from theoretical models to concrete applications. Each chapter ends with a list of questions for further discussion and a bibliography, which is helpful for further readings.

The book will appeal to a wide range of people. Professionals can get a good systematization of knowledge concerning each area of communication activity. Students will gain conceptual insights and basic principle together with real‐world experiences and examples.

2 Structure of the book

The book opens with a clear and useful overview where the editors describe the main thesis as well as its structure. Chapter 1, by the editors, presents a formula, named reputation formula, which shows that reputation is a sum of performance, behavior as well as communication components. Later in the chapter the authors add to the formula the authenticity factor which deals with integrity and the company credo. The chapter also provides a framework for measuring the value of auditing and managing reputation as an organizational asset. In this chapter the authors warn readers not to confuse communication with performance and behavior problems and provide some example of mis‐management as well as best practices.

Chapter 2, by the editors, focuses on the importance of ethics in communication, which concerns every type of organization and deals with transparency and truthfulness. Corporate communication departments are more and more seen as the conscience of organizations and play a crucial role in helping clients and employers behave ethically. The authors encourage readers to reflect on daily ethical challenges that communicators may face.

Chapter 3, by the editors, discusses media relations and underlines the importance of honesty and of deep preparation for an effective management of relationships with journalists. The most important contribution of this chapter consists of suggestions to manage good relationships with reporters, which does not imply that communicators and journalists become friends, but that they find a common goal and work together toward it.

Chapter 4, by Laurel Hart, explains why social media matters, its characteristics and the areas of activities that hugely need social media, such as community‐building, customer service, market research, media relations, crisis management and employee engagement. Readers can find a significant link among social media and ethical issues which imply honesty of relationship (you say who you are speaking for), honesty of opinion (you say what you believe), honesty of identity (you never obscure your identity).

Chapter 5, by Jeff Grimshaw and Tanya Mann, deals with organizational communication and underlines that any effort to manage reputation effectively should include the alignment of employees' behaviors and performance. The authors argue that reputation reflects what an organization is and that employees are the most strategic constituencies that help organizations to build their reputational capital.

Chapter 6, by Ed Ingle, concerns government relations and includes all forms of lobbying activities and aims to influence the public policy. Even if the chapter prevalently refers to the American rules' and subjects' system, it offers useful insights on best practices that a corporate government relations professional should employ worldwide. The main link between government relations and corporate reputation concerns ethical rules and codes, honesty and integrity in doing work, deep consistency among messages.

Chapter 7, by editors, focuses on community relations which are based on trust, commitment and mutual respect between organization and community. The authors describe the six principles by Joe Hardy, the founder of 84 Lumber, the national building‐supplies company, which built about fifty stores each year from Maryland to Nevada paying equal attention to build sustainable and ongoing relationships with local communities. This is a significant example of how a successful experience has been transformed by the authors into a list of general and ready‐to‐be‐used principles.

Chapter 8, by editors and Eugene Donati, is dedicated to investor relations which is a function deeply intertwined with other corporate functions such as media relations, legal department and, if employees own significant shares, with employees relations. The aims of the chapter are both to argue that investor relations enhance a company's reputation when they go beyond disclosure activities and respect of regulation and to describe what PR professionals can do to facilitate the access to information by investors, also through digital financial media.

Chapter 9, by Lynn Appelbaum, Gail S. Belmuth, Katja Schroeder, deals with global corporate communication which needs a comprehensive understanding of different cultures, as well a deep knowledge of political, economic, social and cultural values. The authors discuss one of the greatest challenges of global corporate communication: standardise or customise? The chapter offers useful insights for communication professionals to decide which is the most effective strategy between the two aforementioned approaches. Another interesting section for readers concerns how global principles can be applied to employee communication, for instance to organise a cascade communication in global organizations.

Chapter 10, by Timothy P. McMahon, focuses on integrated communication (IC) that overcomes the concept of Integrated Marketing Communication, which is marketing‐focused and customer‐centric. IC includes innovation, the overall business plans of the firm, the alignment of brand with reputation. While IMC puts emphasis on selling the product, IC considers more crucial relationships which enhance identity and reputation. Readers can find a useful model, named IC Hook Model, that illustrates the parallel roles of communication and marketing and shows how communication can contribute to the critical marketing process of creating, capturing and sustaining corporate value.

Chapter 11, by editors, gives important suggestions to develop an issue management plan and function. An effective issue management structure should be constantly aligned with business operations, marketplace realities, and leadership styles. In particular, issues like public reactions and criticism could deeply damage company's reputation. That is the reason why communication is a crucial component of each issue management plan.

Chapter 12, by editors, concerns crisis communication and describe the basic principles to manage effectively a crisis, but it is even more important to prevent it by developing an early warning system and preparing adequate as well as ready‐to‐be‐used crisis responses. One of the most interesting sections of this chapter deals with the control of rumors and describe the mathematical principles which govern the transmission of rumor.

Chapter 13, by Anthony P. Ewing, discusses corporate responsibility which means meeting the expectations of a large number of stakeholders and it goes beyond philanthropy and legal compliance. I completely agree with authors when they say that corporate responsibility should be related to business strategy and every function in an organization should be able to state the business case for corporate responsibility.

Chapter 14, by Louis Capozzi, is about public relations consulting and starting from the history of PR consulting firms, it provides insights on the modern scenario and how‐to‐do information in order to manage consultants and consultancies.

The final chapter of the book by the editors draws together the key arguments of the book, summarize the challenges facing the public relations practitioners today. The authors finally underline a concept: effective communication should help a company meet its business goals faster and better. That means to be really strategic!

3 Contribution

This book gives two unique contributions. First, it explains in details how each corporate communication and public relations activity can enhance reputation, linking specific communication instruments to singular components of corporate reputation. For instance, the authors do not merely describe principles for managing effective media relations, but they conceptualize how media relations can be managed to develop relationships with reporters based on mutual respect and trust. That is the way to make not only the organizations visible in the media, but to give a contribution for a more solid and durable reputation. Even if scholars, since nineties, have tried to identify which features communication process should possess in order to enhance reputation, the book by Doorley and Garcia is the first work that shifts from a general level to the description of each single area of communication. Communication activities which are described are numerous, from classical ones such as media relations and investor relations, to those developed more recently, such as social media PR. The theme that is not fully explored is measurement and evaluation. Readers would benefit from a chapter dedicated to techniques to evaluate the impact of communication activities on reputation, as well as methods to measure shifts of reputational assets.

Second, the book encourages readers to reflect on problems, issue and challenges that communicators may daily face. It presents real situations, mis‐management examples, successes together with failures. That is useful to practitioners to compare their experiences with those of other professionals. That is equally useful to students to get inside a real professional's life. The book wants to present the professional reality as it is, with contradictions, its ambiguities and dilemmas. The only limit is that examples and practices are prevalently focused on the American reality. While some examples can be easily applied to other countries' realities, in some cases, such as for investor relations and government relations, is much more difficult.

To sum up the book is full of insights and resources to understand how public relations and corporate communication can support the success of organizations.

A About the reviewer

Stefania Romenti is Assistant Professor in Public Relations and Corporate Communication at IULM University (Milan, Italy) and Vice‐Director of the Executive Master in Corporate Public Relations (IULM University). She centers her research on strategic communication, corporate reputation, stakeholder management and engagement, dialogue, social media, measurement and evaluation. Stefania Romenti can be contacted at: stefania.romenti@iulm.it