The reputation of a social entity (a
person
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, ...
, a
social group
In the social sciences, a social group can be defined as two or more people who interact with one another, share similar characteristics, and collectively have a sense of unity. Regardless, social groups come in a myriad of sizes and varieties ...
, an
organization
An organization or organisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is an entity—such as a company, an institution, or an association—comprising one or more people and having a particular purpose.
The word is derived from ...
, or a place) is an opinion about that entity typically as a result of social evaluation on a set of criteria, such as behavior or performance.
Reputation is a
ubiquitous
Omnipresence or ubiquity is the property of being present anywhere and everywhere. The term omnipresence is most often used in a religious context as an attribute of a deity or supreme being, while the term ubiquity is generally used to describ ...
,
spontaneous, and highly efficient
mechanism of social control. It is a subject of study in social,
management
Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business.
Management includes the activities o ...
, and
technological
Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...
science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
s. Its influence ranges from competitive settings, like markets, to cooperative ones, like firms, organizations, institutions and communities. Furthermore, reputation acts on different levels of agency, individual and supra-individual. At the supra-individual level, it concerns groups, communities, collectives and abstract social entities (such as firms, corporations, organizations, countries, cultures and even civilizations). It affects phenomena of different scales, from everyday life to relationships between nations. Reputation is a fundamental instrument of
social order
The term social order can be used in two senses: In the first sense, it refers to a particular system of social structures and institutions. Examples are the ancient, the feudal, and the capitalist social order. In the second sense, social order ...
, based upon distributed, spontaneous
social control.
The concept of reputation is considered important in
business
Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or Trade, buying and selling Product (business), products (such as goods and Service (economics), services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for pr ...
,
politics
Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...
,
education
Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Va ...
,
online communities
An online community, also called an internet community or web community, is a community whose members interact with each other primarily via the Internet. Members of the community usually share common interests. For many, online communities may fe ...
, and many other fields, and it may be considered as a reflection of that social entity's
identity
Identity may refer to:
* Identity document
* Identity (philosophy)
* Identity (social science)
* Identity (mathematics)
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''Identity'' (1987 film), an Iranian film
* ''Identity'' (2003 film), ...
.
Corporate reputation
Reputation as a concept for companies
Academic literature
Since 1980, the study of 'corporate reputation' has attracted growing scholarly attention from economics, sociology, and management.
The concept of reputation has undergone substantial evolution in the academic literature over the past several decades.
Terminology such as reputation, branding, image and identity is often used interchangeably in both the popular press and—until recently—in the academic literature, as well.
The academic literature has generally settled on a small cluster of perspectives on "what reputation is" in a company context.
Economists use game-theory to describe corporate reputations as strategic signals that companies use to convey to markets some of their qualities and abilities. Sociologists view corporate reputation as descriptions of the relative status that companies occupy in an institutional field of rivals and stakeholders. Management scholars describe corporate reputations in one of two main ways,
including:
*the broad view: as an aggregation of perceptions that form as audiences judge the behaviors of companies.
** This is often evaluated by broad ranking measures of the company as a whole, such as the Fortune ''Most Admired Companies'' rankings
*the specific view: as an assessment, by some specific audience, of the company's ability to perform or behave in a certain way.
These are split into two broad categories: (a) outcome/capability reputation and (b) behavior/character reputation,
which is intended to capture both the economic and sociological forms of reputation.
** (a) ''outcome/capability reputation'': this reputation type involves an assessment of how ''well'' the company performs on a certain dimension. The most common examples of these is performing well financially or providing high quality products or services.
All of these dimensions can be objectively ordered, such as better/worse financial performance (as evaluated by objective, market-based measures of financial performance) or better/worse product quality (as evaluated by a collection of users).
** (b) ''behavior/character reputation'': this reputation type is said to arise when a company is recognized as ''consistently'' ''behaving'' in a certain way, in a manner that is relatively devoid of objectively identifiable performance. For instance, a company might prioritize investment in innovation, the improvement of its operational efficiency, or sourcing from local suppliers.
Practical measurement of reputation
In practice, corporate reputations are revealed by the relative rankings of companies created and propagated by information intermediaries. For example, business magazines and newspapers such as Fortune, Forbes, Business Week, Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal regularly publish lists of the best places to work, the best business schools, or the most innovative companies. These rankings are explicit orderings of corporate reputations, and the relative positions of companies on these rankings are a reflection of the relative performance of companies on different cognitive attributes. Corporate reputations are found to influence the attractiveness of ranked companies as suppliers of products, as prospective employers, and as investments.
For those reasons, companies themselves have become increasingly involved with the practice of
reputation management
Reputation management, originally a public relations term, refers to the influencing, controlling, enhancing, or concealing of an individual's or group's reputation. The growth of the internet and social media led to growth of reputation managem ...
.
Connections to related, company-level concepts
Like any social construct, reputation is similar to (i.e.,
convergent with) certain concepts and different (i.e.,
discriminant
In mathematics, the discriminant of a polynomial is a quantity that depends on the coefficients and allows deducing some properties of the roots without computing them. More precisely, it is a polynomial function of the coefficients of the origi ...
) from others. Reputation can be compared to other "social evaluation" or "social judgment" constructs. For instance, reputation is said to be convergent with adjacent concepts like corporate image, identity, celebrity, status, legitimacy, social approval (likability), and visibility (prominence), but discriminant from related constructs like stigma and infamy.
Reputation is often considered to be a pragmatic evaluation - actors determine whether the target of the evaluation can be seen as useful to them.
Until recently, the relationships with these adjacent constructs were merely theoretical; that is, they were not formally tested or empirically validated for their "
nomological
In philosophy, nomology refers to a "science of laws" based on the theory that it is possible to elaborate descriptions dedicated not to particular aspects of reality but inspired by a scientific vision of universal validity expressed by scientific ...
relationships" with these other, related constructs.
*''Conceptual relationships:'' In 2012, the ''Oxford Handbook of Corporate Reputation''
was released to provide some clarity to the increasingly fragmented field of social evaluation constructs, all of which had been referred to (either implicitly or explicitly) under an umbrella of "reputation" concepts. In 2020, the introductory part of ''The Power of Being Divisive: Understanding Negative Evaluations'',
develops a framework to disentangle a variety of concepts in the field of social evaluations - in particular making the point that negative and positive evaluations can be on different continua, and social actors can be both positively and negatively evaluated at the same time. In this opus and in the Oxford handbook, scholars made incremental efforts to distinguish between handfuls of these constructs, such as:
** reputation vs. celebrity
** reputation vs. status
** reputation vs. legitimacy vs. status
** reputation vs. social approval
** reputation vs. stigma
** reputation vs. status vs. celebrity vs. stigma
*''Empirical relationships:'' In 2020, Bitektine and colleagues
conducted the first major construct validation study to: (a) create scales for the constructs of reputation, cognitive legitimacy, sociopolitical legitimacy, and status, and (b) empirically distinguish between them by undertaking a multiple studies involving several
confirmatory factor analyses.
** This construct validation effort addressed the "broad view" of reputation as a company-level evaluation (not an evaluation for specific attributes).
The scale items for reputation that resulted from this effort, as evaluated by an audience of respondents representing the general public, included: "The reputation of this company is excellent", "
his
His or HIS may refer to:
Computing
* Hightech Information System, a Hong Kong graphics card company
* Honeywell Information Systems
* Hybrid intelligent system
* Microsoft Host Integration Server
Education
* Hangzhou International School, in ...
is a reputable company", and "
his
His or HIS may refer to:
Computing
* Hightech Information System, a Hong Kong graphics card company
* Honeywell Information Systems
* Hybrid intelligent system
* Microsoft Host Integration Server
Education
* Hangzhou International School, in ...
is a dependable company".
** There still exists no construct validation effort for the "specific view" of reputation (i.e., that reputation is best understood as a specific audience's view of the company with respect to a specific attribute
).
Consequences of reputation
Performance outcomes
Myriad reputation studies from the 1980s to the 2000s demonstrated that a company's reputation was positively related to various performance measures, such as financial success and profitability.
However, more recent work demonstrated that reputation can be both "a benefit and a burden", suggesting that "the bigger you are, the harder you (might) fall" with respect to reputation.
Decision outcomes
Relatedly, researchers have theorized and/or demonstrated that a company's reputation could also influence the decisions and perceptions of its managers;
in some cases, reputation can promote the use of risk-reduction strategies by managers as they seek to preserve the reputation they have cultivated.
In other cases, researchers argue that reputation can embolden managers to take risks in areas unrelated to their reputation, since stakeholders may be focused on the reputation itself and inattentive to other areas of the company.
Topics relating to reputation
Reputation management
Many organizations create
public relations
Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. P ...
and
corporate communication
Corporate communication is a set of activities involved in managing and orchestrating all internal and external communications aimed at creating favourable point of view among stakeholders on which the company depends.Riel, Cees B.M. van; Fombrun ...
departments dedicated to assisting companies with reputation management. In addition, many public relations and consulting firms claim expertise in
reputation management
Reputation management, originally a public relations term, refers to the influencing, controlling, enhancing, or concealing of an individual's or group's reputation. The growth of the internet and social media led to growth of reputation managem ...
. The growth of the public relations industry has largely been due to the rising demand for companies to establish credibility and reputation. Incidents which damage a company's reputation for honesty or safety may cause serious damage to finances. For example, in 1999
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. Originally marketed as a temperance drink and intended as a patent medicine, it was invented in the late 19th century by John Stith Pemberton in Atlanta ...
lost $60 million (by its own estimate) after schoolchildren reported suffering from symptoms like
headache
Headache is the symptom of pain in the face, head, or neck. It can occur as a migraine, tension-type headache, or cluster headache. There is an increased risk of depression in those with severe headaches.
Headaches can occur as a result ...
s,
nausea
Nausea is a diffuse sensation of unease and discomfort, sometimes perceived as an urge to vomit. While not painful, it can be a debilitating symptom if prolonged and has been described as placing discomfort on the chest, abdomen, or back of the ...
and
shivering
Shivering (also called shuddering) is a bodily function in response to cold and extreme fear in warm-blooded animals. When the core body temperature drops, the shivering reflex is triggered to maintain homeostasis. Skeletal muscles begin to s ...
after drinking its products.
Although most companies see reputation management as a central part of a CEO's role, managing reputation involves a set of ongoing activities that are best managed when they are delegated to a specific individual in the organization. This is why some companies have created the position of
chief reputation officer
Chief may refer to:
Title or rank
Military and law enforcement
* Chief master sergeant, the ninth, and highest, enlisted rank in the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force
* Chief of police, the head of a police department
* Chief of the boa ...
(CRO). A growing number of people in the business world now have the word "reputation" in their titles –including
Dow Chemical
The Dow Chemical Company, officially Dow Inc., is an American multinational chemical corporation headquartered in Midland, Michigan, United States. The company is among the three largest chemical producers in the world.
Dow manufactures plastics ...
,
SABMiller
SABMiller plc was a South African multinational brewing and beverage company headquartered in Woking, England on the outskirts of London until 10 October 2016 when it was acquired by Anheuser-Busch InBev. Prior to that date, it was the world's ...
,
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. Originally marketed as a temperance drink and intended as a patent medicine, it was invented in the late 19th century by John Stith Pemberton in Atlanta ...
,
Allstate
The Allstate Corporation is an American insurance company, headquartered in Northfield Township, Illinois, near Northbrook since 1967. Founded in 1931 as part of Sears, Roebuck and Co., it was spun off in 1993 but still partially owned by S ...
,
Repsol YPF
Repsol S.A.
El Nuevo Herald, 2012-05-31[Originally an init ...]
,
Weber Shandwick
Weber Shandwick is a marketing communications firm formed in 2001 by merging the Weber Group, Shandwick International and BSMG. The company is part of global agency network Interpublic Group (IPG), as part of the parent company's IPG DXTRA opera ...
, and
GlaxoSmithKline
GSK plc, formerly GlaxoSmithKline plc, is a British multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with global headquarters in London, England. Established in 2000 by a merger of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham. GSK is the ten ...
(although no longer).
Hoover's
D&B Hoovers was founded by Gary Hoover and Patrick Spain in 1990Solomon, Steve.The Dynamic Duo" '' Inc.''. October 15, 1997. Retrieved on April 7, 2014. as an American business research company that provided information on companies and industr ...
shows a list of such officers.
Social media like Twitter, Linked In, and Facebook have made it increasingly important for companies to monitor their online reputations in order to anticipate and respond to criticisms of their actions. There are two main routes that customers can take when complaining about companies -individual-direct response or broadcast-based response. For a company, it takes a lot of time and effort to address individual-direct responses. One study showed that "...72% of customers expect a reply within one hour." In order to best recover from negative complaints on social media, it is important for a company to prove its authenticity by providing more specific answers directly to its critics.
Reputation capital
A corporate reputation can be managed, accumulated and traded in for trust, legitimization of a position of power and social recognition, and people are prepared to pay a premium price for goods and services offered, which in turn generates higher customer loyalty, a stronger willingness from shareholders to hold on to shares in times of crisis, and greater likelihood to invest in the company's stock. Therefore, reputation is one of the most valuable forms of "capital" of a company. "Delivering functional and social expectations of the public on the one hand and manage to build a unique identity on the other hand creates trust and this trust builds the informal framework of a company. This framework provides "return in cooperation" and produces
reputation capital. A positive reputation will secure a company or organisation long-term competitive advantages. The higher a company's reputation capital, the lower the costs of supervising and exercising control."
Building reputation through stakeholder management
According to
stakeholder theory
The stakeholder theory is a theory of organizational management and business ethics that accounts for multiple constituencies impacted by business entities like employees, suppliers, local communities, creditors, and others. It addresses morals ...
,
corporation
A corporation is an organization—usually a group of people or a company—authorized by the state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law "born out of statute"; a legal person in legal context) and r ...
s should be managed for the benefit of all their "stakeholders," not just their
shareholder
A shareholder (in the United States often referred to as stockholder) of a corporation is an individual or legal entity (such as another corporation, a body politic, a trust or partnership) that is registered by the corporation as the legal own ...
s. Stakeholders of a company include any individual or group that can influence or is influenced by a company's practices. The stakeholders of a company can be
suppliers,
consumer
A consumer is a person or a group who intends to order, or uses purchased goods, products, or services primarily for personal, social, family, household and similar needs, who is not directly related to entrepreneurial or business activities. T ...
s, employees, shareholders,
financial
Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of fina ...
community,
government
A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state.
In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a ...
, and
media
Media may refer to:
Communication
* Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data
** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising
** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass el ...
. Companies must properly manage the relationships between stakeholder groups and they must consider the
interest
In finance and economics, interest is payment from a borrower or deposit-taking financial institution to a lender or depositor of an amount above repayment of the principal sum (that is, the amount borrowed), at a particular rate. It is distinct ...
(s) of each stakeholder group carefully. Therefore, it becomes essential to integrate
public relation
Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. Pu ...
s into corporate governance to manage the relationships between these stakeholders which will enhance the organization's reputation. Corporations or institutions which behave
ethically
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns ...
and govern in a good manner build reputational
capital
Capital may refer to:
Common uses
* Capital city, a municipality of primary status
** List of national capital cities
* Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences
* Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used f ...
which is a
competitive advantage
In business, a competitive advantage is an attribute that allows an organization to outperform its competitors.
A competitive advantage may include access to natural resources, such as high-grade ores or a low-cost power source, highly skilled ...
. A good reputation enhances profitability because it attracts customers to products, investors to securities and employees to its jobs.
A company's reputation is an
intangible asset
An intangible asset is an asset that lacks physical substance. Examples are patents, copyright, franchises, goodwill, trademarks, and trade names, as well as software. This is in contrast to physical assets (machinery, buildings, etc.) and finan ...
and a source of competitive advantage against rivals because the company will be viewed as more reliable, credible, trustworthy and responsible to its employees, customers, shareholders and financial markets.
In addition, according to
MORI
Mori is a Japanese and Italian surname, and also a Persian pet name for Morteza. It is also the name of two clans in Japan, and one clan in India.
Italian surname
*Barbara Mori, Uruguayan-Mexican actress
* Camilo Mori, Chilean painter
* Cesare ...
's survey of about 200
managers
Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business.
Management includes the activities o ...
in the private sector, 99%
responded that the management of corporate reputation is very (83%) or fairly (16%)
important. Reputation is a reflection of companies’
culture
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tyl ...
and
identity
Identity may refer to:
* Identity document
* Identity (philosophy)
* Identity (social science)
* Identity (mathematics)
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''Identity'' (1987 film), an Iranian film
* ''Identity'' (2003 film), ...
. Also, it is the outcome of managers' efforts to prove their success and excellence. It is sustained through acting reliably, credibly, trustworthily and responsibly in the market. It can be sustained through consistent communication activities both internally and externally with key stakeholder groups. This directly influences a public company's stock prices in the financial market. Therefore, this reputation makes a reputational capital that becomes a strategic asset and advantage for that company. As a consequence, public relations must be used in order to establish long lasting relationships with the stakeholders, which will enhance the reputation of the company.
Causes and consequences
Reputation models can be placed in a broader framework that distinguishes reputation from its underlying causes and from its consequences. This approach is important to clarify the meaning of reputation.
*Causes of reputation are seen to reside in stakeholder experiences. Stakeholder experiences relate to a company's day-to-day business operations, its branding and marketing and "noise" in the system, such as the media and word of mouth. Further causes of reputation may include the perceived innovativeness of a company, the customers' expectations, the (perceived) quality of the company's goods and services and the subsequent customer satisfaction, all of which differ according to the respective customers' cultural background.
[Falkenreck, C. & Wagner, R.: The Impact of Perceived Innovativeness on Maintaining a Buyer-Seller Relationship in Health Care Markets: A Cross-Cultural Study. In: Journal of Marketing Management 3-4 (2011), Nr. 27, S. 225-242.]
*The consequences of reputation reside in the behaviors (supportive or resistant) that stakeholders demonstrate towards a company. Behaviors such as advocacy, commitment, and cooperation are key positive outcomes of a good reputation. Boycotts and lawsuits are key negative outcomes of a bad reputation.
Reputation recovery/repair
Organizations frequently make missteps that cause them to lose the positive regard of stakeholders. In the wake of studies addressing the disproportionate penalties that accrue to high reputation firms when they make such missteps,
reputation researchers have proposed models to account for both reputation damage and reputation repair, summarizing prior work in disciplines including economics, marketing, accounting, and management.
Reputation transfer
In the context of
brand extension
Brand extension or brand stretching is a marketing strategy in which a firm marketing a product with a well-developed image uses the same brand name in a different product category. The new product is called a spin-off.
Organizations use this ...
strategies, many companies rely on reputation transfer as a means of transferring the good reputation of a company and its existing products to new markets and new products. Consumers who are already familiar with other products of an established
brand
A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create an ...
, exhibiting
customer satisfaction
Customer satisfaction (often abbreviated as CSAT) is a term frequently used in marketing. It is a measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation. Customer satisfaction is defined as "the number of c ...
and loyalty, will more easily accept new products of the same brand. In contrast to brand extension, the general concept of reputation transfer also requires the transfer of a company's values and identity to the new products and/or services and the related brands when entering new markets. It is important, however, to pay attention to the image fit between preexisting and new brands, for this factor has been proven to be critical for the success of brand extensions. In contrast to the special case of brand extension, the general concept of reputation transfer also requires the transfer of the values and identity of a company to the new products and/or services and the related brands when entering new markets. A strong image might therefore even hamper the introduction of new product lines if customers do not associate the competences relevant to the new market/category/product line with the existing company or brand.
A company's reputation is furthermore influenced by
culture
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tyl ...
, as nationalities differ with regard to how valued specific aspects of the company's
brand identity
A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create a ...
are in the respective national culture (e.g. environmental concerns or work ethics) as well as with regard to popular cultural dimensions (e.g.
Hofstede
Gerard Hendrik (Geert) Hofstede (2 October 1928 – 12 February 2020) was a Dutch social psychologist, IBM employee, and Professor Emeritus of Organizational Anthropology and International Management at Maastricht University in the Netherla ...
). Subsequently, these differences impact the success of reputation transfer significantly.
[Falkenreck, C. & Wagner, R.: Impact of Direct Marketing Activities on Company Reputation Transfer Success: Empirical Evidence from Five Different Cultures. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Corporate Reputation, Brand Identity, and Competitiveness. Beijing: 2008]
Cognitive view of reputation
The
cognitive
Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
view of reputation has become increasingly prominent in reputation research. It has led to improved understanding of the role played by reputation in a number of practical domains and scientific fields. In the study of
cooperation
Cooperation (written as co-operation in British English) is the process of groups of organisms working or acting together for common, mutual, or some underlying benefit, as opposed to working in competition for selfish benefit. Many animal a ...
and
social dilemma
Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not.
Etymology
The word "social" derives from ...
s, for instance, the role of reputation as a partner selection
mechanism
Mechanism may refer to:
* Mechanism (engineering), rigid bodies connected by joints in order to accomplish a desired force and/or motion transmission
*Mechanism (biology), explaining how a feature is created
*Mechanism (philosophy), a theory that ...
started to be appreciated in the early 1980s.
Working toward such a definition, reputation can be viewed as a socially transmitted meta-
belief
A belief is an attitude that something is the case, or that some proposition is true. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false. To believe something is to take i ...
(i.e., belief about belief) that is a property of an agent, that results from the
attitude
Attitude may refer to:
Philosophy and psychology
* Attitude (psychology), an individual's predisposed state of mind regarding a value
* Metaphysics of presence
* Propositional attitude, a relational mental state connecting a person to a pro ...
s other actors have about some socially desirable
behaviour
Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as wel ...
, be it cooperation,
reciprocity, or
norm
Naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) and technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive materials (TENORM) consist of materials, usually industrial wastes or by-products enriched with radioactive elements found in the envir ...
-compliance. Reputation plays a crucial role in the
evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...
of these behaviours: reputation transmission allows socially desirable behaviour to spread. Rather than concentrating on the property only, the cognitive
model
A model is an informative representation of an object, person or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin ''modulus'', a measure.
Models c ...
of reputation accounts not only for reputation-formation but also for the propagation of reputation.
To model this aspect, it is necessary to specify and develop a more refined
classification Classification is a process related to categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated and understood.
Classification is the grouping of related facts into classes.
It may also refer to:
Business, organizat ...
of reputation. A recommendation can be extremely precise; in the
stock market
A stock market, equity market, or share market is the aggregation of buyers and sellers of stocks (also called shares), which represent ownership claims on businesses; these may include ''securities'' listed on a public stock exchange, as ...
, for example, an
adviser
An adviser or advisor is normally a person with more and deeper knowledge in a specific area and usually also includes persons with cross-functional and multidisciplinary expertise. An adviser's role is that of a mentor or guide and differs categor ...
, when discussing the reputation of a
bond
Bond or bonds may refer to:
Common meanings
* Bond (finance), a type of debt security
* Bail bond, a commercial third-party guarantor of surety bonds in the United States
* Chemical bond, the attraction of atoms, ions or molecules to form chemica ...
, can supplement his informed
opinion
An opinion is a judgment, viewpoint, or statement that is not conclusive, rather than facts, which are true statements.
Definition
A given opinion may deal with subjective matters in which there is no conclusive finding, or it may deal with f ...
with both historical series and current events. In informal settings,
gossip
Gossip is idle talk or rumour, especially about the personal or private affairs of others; the act is also known as dishing or tattling.
Gossip is a topic of research in evolutionary psychology, which has found gossip to be an important means ...
, although vague, may contain precious hints both to facts ("I've been told this
physician
A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...
has shown questionable behavior") and to conflicts taking place at the information level (if a
candidate
A candidate, or nominee, is the prospective recipient of an award or honor, or a person seeking or being considered for some kind of position; for example:
* to be elected to an office — in this case a candidate selection procedure occurs.
* t ...
for a
role
A role (also rôle or social role) is a set of connected behaviors, rights, moral obligation, obligations, beliefs, and social norm, norms as conceptualized by people in a social situation. It is an expected or free or continuously changing behavi ...
spreads defamatory information about another candidate, whom should you trust?).
Moreover, the expression "it is said that John Smith is a cheater" is intrinsically a reputation spreading act, because on one hand it refers to a (possibly false) common opinion, and on the other the very act of saying "it is said" is self-assessing, since it provides at least one factual occasion when that something is said, because the person who says so (the gossiper), while appearing to spread the saying a bit further, may actually be in the phase of initiating it.
Gossip can also be used as an identifier only – as when gossiping about unreachable
icons
An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Catholic churches. They are not simply artworks; "an icon is a sacred image used in religious devotion". The most ...
, like
royalty
Royalty may refer to:
* Any individual monarch, such as a king, queen, emperor, empress, etc.
* Royal family, the immediate family of a king or queen regnant, and sometimes his or her extended family
* Royalty payment for use of such things as int ...
or
showbiz celebrities
Celebrity is a condition of fame and broad public recognition of a person or group as a result of the attention given to them by mass media. An individual may attain a celebrity status from having great wealth, their participation in sports ...
– useful only to show the gossiper belongs to the group of the informed ones. While most cases seem to share the characteristic of being primarily used to predict future behavior, they can have, for example, manipulative sub-goals, even more important than the forecast.
In the case of a communication between two parties, one (the advisee) that is requesting advice about the
potential
Potential generally refers to a currently unrealized ability. The term is used in a wide variety of fields, from physics to the social sciences to indicate things that are in a state where they are able to change in ways ranging from the simple re ...
for
danger
Danger is a lack of safety and may refer to:
Places
* Danger Cave, an archaeological site in Utah
* Danger Island, Great Chagos Bank, Indian Ocean
* Danger Island, alternate name of Pukapuka Atoll in the Cook Islands, Pacific Ocean
* Danger Isla ...
in a
financial transaction
A financial transaction is an agreement, or communication, between a buyer and seller to exchange goods, services, or assets for payment. Any transaction involves a change in the status of the finances of two or more businesses or individuals. A ...
with another party (the potential partner, target), and the other (the adviser, evaluator) that is giving
advice
Advice (noun) or advise (verb) may refer to:
* Advice (opinion), an opinion or recommendation offered as a guide to action, conduct
* Advice (constitutional law) a frequently binding instruction issued to a constitutional office-holder
* Advice (p ...
. Roughly speaking, the advice could fall under one of the following three categories :
# the adviser declares it believes the potential partner is (is not) good for the transaction in object;
# the adviser declares it believes another (named or otherwise defined) agent or set of agents believes the potential partner is (is not) good for the transaction in object;
# the adviser declares it believes in an undefined set of agents, hence there is a belief the potential partner is (is not) good for the transaction in object.
Note the care to maintain the possible levels of truth (the adviser declares – but could be lying – it believes – but could be wrong – etc..). The cases are listed, as it is evident, in decreasing order of responsibility. While one could feel most actual examples fall under the first case, the other two are not unnecessarily complicated nor actually infrequent. Indeed, most of the common gossip falls under the third category, and, except for electronic
interaction
Interaction is action that occurs between two or more objects, with broad use in philosophy and the sciences. It may refer to:
Science
* Interaction hypothesis, a theory of second language acquisition
* Interaction (statistics)
* Interactions o ...
, this is the most frequent form of referral. All examples concern the evaluation of a given object (target), a social agent (which may be either individual or supra-individual, and in the latter case, either a group or a collective), held by another social agent, the evaluator.
The examples above can be turned into more precise definitions using the concept of
social
Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not.
Etymology
The word "social" derives from ...
evaluation
Evaluation is a
systematic determination and assessment of a subject's merit, worth and significance, using criteria governed by a set of standards. It can assist an organization, program, design, project or any other intervention or initiative ...
. At this point, we can propose to coin a new
lexical item
In lexicography, a lexical item is a single word, a part of a word, or a chain of words ( catena) that forms the basic elements of a language's lexicon (≈ vocabulary). Examples are ''cat'', ''traffic light'', ''take care of'', ''by the way' ...
, ''image'', whose character should be immediately evident and is clearly linked to reputation.
Image
Image is a global or averaged evaluation of a given target on the part of an agent. It consists of (a set of) social evaluations about the characteristics of the target. Image as an object of communication is what is exchanged in examples 1 and 2, above. In the second case, we call it third-party image. It may concern a subset of the target's characteristics, i.e., its willingness to comply with socially accepted norms and customs, or its
skills
A skill is the learned ability to act with determined results with good execution often within a given amount of time, energy, or both. Skills can often be divided into domain-general and domain-specific skills. For example, in the domain of wo ...
(ways), or its definition as pertaining to a precise agent. Indeed, we can define special cases of image, including third-party image, the evaluation that an agent believes a third party has of the target, or even shared image, that is, an evaluation shared by a
group
A group is a number of persons or things that are located, gathered, or classed together.
Groups of people
* Cultural group, a group whose members share the same cultural identity
* Ethnic group, a group whose members share the same ethnic ide ...
. Not even this last is reputation, since it tries to define too precisely the mental status of the group.
Reputation, as distinct from image, is the process and the effect of transmitting a target image. To be more precise, we call reputation transmission a communication of an evaluation without the specification of the evaluator, if not for a group attribution, and only in the default sense discussed before. This covers the case of example 3 above. More precisely, reputation is a believed, social, meta-evaluation; it is built upon three distinct but interrelated objects :
# a cognitive representation, or more precisely a believed evaluation – this could be somebody's image, but is enough that this consist of a communicated evaluation;
# a population object, i.e., a propagating believed evaluation; and
# an objective emergent property at the agent level, i.e., what the agent is believed to be.
In fact, reputation is a highly dynamic
phenomenon
A phenomenon ( : phenomena) is an observable event. The term came into its modern philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with the noumenon, which ''cannot'' be directly observed. Kant was heavily influenced by Gottfried W ...
in two distinct senses: it is subject to change, especially as an effect of corruption, errors,
deception
Deception or falsehood is an act or statement that misleads, hides the truth, or promotes a belief, concept, or idea that is not true. It is often done for personal gain or advantage. Deception can involve dissimulation, propaganda and sleight o ...
, etc.; and it emerges as an effect of a multi-level bidirectional process. Reputation is also how others know and perceive you as an individual.
While ''image'' only moves (when transmitted and accepted) from one individual cognition to another, the
anonymous character of reputation makes it a more complex phenomenon. Reputation proceeds from the level of individual cognition (when is born, possibly as an image, but not always) to the level of social propagation (at this level, it not necessarily believed as from any specific agent) and from this level back to individual cognition again (when it is accepted).
Moreover, once it gets to the population level, reputation gives rise to a further property at the agent level. It is both what people think about targets and what targets are in the eyes of others. From the very moment an agent is targeted by the
community
A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, tow ...
, his or her life will change whether he or she wants it or not or believes it or not. Reputation has become the immaterial, more powerful equivalent of a
scarlet letter sewed to one's clothes. It is more powerful because it may not even be perceived by the individual to whom it sticks, and consequently it is out of the individual's power to control and manipulate.
More simply speaking for those who want a working
definition
A definition is a statement of the meaning of a term (a word, phrase, or other set of symbols). Definitions can be classified into two large categories: intensional definitions (which try to give the sense of a term), and extensional definitio ...
of reputation, reputation is the
sum of impressions held by a
company
A company, abbreviated as co., is a Legal personality, legal entity representing an association of people, whether Natural person, natural, Legal person, legal or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members share a common p ...
's
stakeholders. In other words, reputation is in the "eyes of the beholder". It need not be just a company's reputation but could be the reputation of an individual, country,
brand
A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create an ...
,
political party
A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology ...
,
industry
Industry may refer to:
Economics
* Industry (economics), a generally categorized branch of economic activity
* Industry (manufacturing), a specific branch of economic activity, typically in factories with machinery
* The wider industrial sector ...
. But the key point in reputation is not what the
leadership
Leadership, both as a research area and as a practical skill, encompasses the ability of an individual, group or organization to "lead", influence or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations. The word "leadership" often gets view ...
insists but what others perceive it to be. For a company, its reputation is how esteemed it is in the eyes of its
employee
Employment is a relationship between two parties regulating the provision of paid labour services. Usually based on a contract, one party, the employer, which might be a corporation, a not-for-profit organization, a co-operative, or any other ...
s,
customer
In sales, commerce, and economics, a customer (sometimes known as a client, buyer, or purchaser) is the recipient of a good, service, product or an idea - obtained from a seller, vendor, or supplier via a financial transaction or exchange for ...
s,
investor
An investor is a person who allocates financial capital with the expectation of a future Return on capital, return (profit) or to gain an advantage (interest). Through this allocated capital most of the time the investor purchases some specie ...
s,
talent,
prospective candidates,
competitor
Competition is a rivalry where two or more parties strive for a common goal which cannot be shared: where one's gain is the other's loss (an example of which is a zero-sum game). Competition can arise between entities such as organisms, indivi ...
s,
analysts,
alumni
Alumni (singular: alumnus (masculine) or alumna (feminine)) are former students of a school, college, or university who have either attended or graduated in some fashion from the institution. The feminine plural alumnae is sometimes used for grou ...
,
regulators
Regulator may refer to:
Technology
* Regulator (automatic control), a device that maintains a designated characteristic, as in:
** Battery regulator
** Pressure regulator
** Diving regulator
** Voltage regulator
* Regulator (sewer), a control de ...
and the list goes on.
Online
Online reputation is a factor in any
online community
An online community, also called an internet community or web community, is a community whose members interact with each other primarily via the Internet. Members of the community usually share common interests. For many, online communities may fe ...
where
trust
Trust often refers to:
* Trust (social science), confidence in or dependence on a person or quality
It may also refer to:
Business and law
* Trust law, a body of law under which one person holds property for the benefit of another
* Trust (bus ...
is important. Examples include
eBay
eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became a ...
, an
auction
An auction is usually a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from the lowest bidder. Some exceptions to this definition ex ...
service which uses a system of customer feedback to publicly rate each member's reputation, or
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economi ...
which has a similar review system. One study found that a good reputation added 7.6% to the price received. In addition, building and maintaining a good reputation can be a significant
motivation
Motivation is the reason for which humans and other animals initiate, continue, or terminate a behavior at a given time. Motivational states are commonly understood as forces acting within the agent that create a disposition to engage in goal-dire ...
for
contributing to online communities .
Individuals employ monitoring to ensure that they keep up with their online reputation. Given the number of sites on the Internet, it is impossible to manually monitor the entire web for pages that may affect one's online reputation. Free tools such as
Google Alerts
Google Alerts is a content change detection and notification service, offered by Google. The service sends emails to the user when it finds new results—such as web pages, newspaper articles, blogs, or scientific research—that match the user's ...
can be used to keep track online reputations on a small scale, while larger businesses and clients may use more powerful analytics to monitor online interactions and mentions.
Paid tools for online reputation management focus on either brand protection or online reputation. These tools track mentions of a brand or product on the Internet, on
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
,
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
, blogs, and other
social networking
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...
sites and websites.
Online reputation can be evaluated by how well it is being
managed. This form of reputation is usually called web or digital reputation to distinguish it from the online reputation. Indeed, digital or web reputation does not concern the virtual online reputation only, but the whole real reputation of a person or a company as it is affected by the Internet. Online reputation furthermore should not be confused with a company's
digital identity
A digital identity is information used by computer systems to represent an external agent – a person, organization, application, or device. Digital identities allow access to services provided with computers to be automated and make it possibl ...
.
An online reputation is the perception that one generates on the Internet based on their
digital footprint
Digital footprint or digital shadow refers to one's unique set of traceable digital activities, actions, contributions and communications manifested on the Internet or digital devices. Digital footprints can be classified as either passive or a ...
. Digital footprints accumulate through all of the content shared, feedback provided and information that is created online. Due to the fact that if someone has a bad online reputation, he can easily change his pseudonym, new accounts on sites such as eBay or Amazon are usually distrusted. If an individual or company wants to manage their online reputation, they will face many more difficulties.
According to one study, 84% of responding business leaders saw the greatest reputation threat online to companies as negative media coverage. The next two greatest threats are customer complaints in the media or on grievance sites online (71%) and negative word of mouth (54%). This negative word of mouth could be from dissatisfied customers but from employees as well. With the power of business review websites and customer forums, a company's online reputation can be damaged anonymously online.
Employers have begun using the online reputations of job applicants to help their hiring choices. By checking a candidate's
social networking
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...
profiles on sites such as
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
,
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
and
MySpace, employers gain insight into a candidate's character and suitability for a job.
Some individuals and organizations hire reputation management companies to attempt to hide truthful but unflattering information about themselves. A recent alleged example is that of Dr.
Anil Potti, who resigned from
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...
after it was discovered that he had misrepresented himself on his resume and became the subject of a
scientific misconduct
Scientific misconduct is the violation of the standard codes of scholarly conduct and ethical behavior in the publication of professional scientific research. A '' Lancet'' review on ''Handling of Scientific Misconduct in Scandinavian countrie ...
investigation.
See also
*
Digital identity
A digital identity is information used by computer systems to represent an external agent – a person, organization, application, or device. Digital identities allow access to services provided with computers to be automated and make it possibl ...
*
Face (sociological concept)
Face is a class of behaviors and customs practiced mainly in Asian cultures, associated with the morality, honor, and authority of an individual (or group of individuals), and its image in social groups.
Face refers to a sociological concept i ...
*
Governance
Governance is the process of interactions through the laws, social norm, norms, power (social and political), power or language of an organized society over a social system (family, tribe, formal organization, formal or informal organization, a ...
*
Honour
Honour (British English) or honor (American English; American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, see spelling differences) is the idea of a bond between an individual and a society as a quality of a person that is both of socia ...
*
Id, ego and super-ego
The id, ego, and super-ego are a set of three concepts in psychoanalytic theory describing distinct, interacting agents in the psychic apparatus (defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche). The three agents are theoretical const ...
*
Reputation management
Reputation management, originally a public relations term, refers to the influencing, controlling, enhancing, or concealing of an individual's or group's reputation. The growth of the internet and social media led to growth of reputation managem ...
*
*
Social capital
Social capital is "the networks of relationships among people who live and work in a particular society, enabling that society to function effectively". It involves the effective functioning of social groups through interpersonal relationships ...
*
Social map
*
Social software
Social software, also known as social apps or social platform, include communications and interactive tools that are often based on the Internet. Communication tools typically handle the capturing, storing and presentation of communication, usua ...
*
Virtual community
A virtual community is a social network of individuals who connect through specific social media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals. Some of the most pervasive virtual communi ...
References
Further reading
* Alsop, R (2004). The 18 Immutable Laws of Corporate Reputation: Creating, Protecting, and Repairing Your Most Valuable Asset,
* Barnett, M. et al. (2006). Corporate Reputation: The Definitional Landscape, in: Corporate Reputation Review, 1/2006
*
* Burkhardt, R. (2007). Reputation Management in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises,
* Fombrun, C. (1996). Reputation. Realizing Value from the Corporate Image,
* Greco, M.; Branca, A. M.; Morena, G. (2010). An Experimental Study of the Reputation Mechanism in a Business Game, ''
Simulation & Gaming'', SAGE
Full text.
* Jackson, K.T. (2004). Building Reputational Capital: Strategies for Integrity and Fair Play that Improve the Bottom Line,
* Jazaieri, H., Logli Allison, M., Campos, B., Young, R. C., & Keltner, D. (2018). Content, structure, and dynamics of personal reputation: The role of trust and status potential within social networks. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations
*
* McElreath, R. (2003). Reputation and the evolution of conflict. ''
Journal of Theoretical Biology
The ''Journal of Theoretical Biology'' is a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering theoretical biology, as well as mathematical, computational, and statistical aspects of biology. Some research areas covered by the journal include cell ...
, 220(3)'':345–57
Full text* Wilkinson, Shannon M. (2012). Online Reputation Management Frequently Asked Questions
Online Reputation Frequently Asked Questions
External links
{{Authority control
Moral psychology
Reputation management
Social status
Social psychology