Post #9: Reading Response on Chapter Eight (Chia and Synott, 2009).

Chapter Eight: Reputation Management: A Driving Force for Action

Chapter 8 looks at how important the management of reputation is to the organisation and how corporate PR practitioners fit in in modern organisations. The stakeholder concept is introduced, something I mentioned in my debate a while back, and corporate reputation, image, brand and identity are placed side-by-side and compared (Chia & Synnott, 2009). This much summarises the scope of the chapter.

With that, in this short reflection I would like to zoom in on the differences between reputation and image as mentioned in our text. Initially, I thought that image was similar to reputation, but the text does mention a bit of difference between the two. For one, reputation is someone's estimation of another person, organisation, or issue. In Mandarin, the term 名誉 (ming yu) would come the closest to this; and shows that its dependent on one's name (名) and honour (誉) and is related to what the person or organisation does.

The textbook lists the problems of measuring it, and cites Enron as a very good example of how reputation measures can fail. Enron was supposedly tops in innovation and second for quality management in 2011 but collapsed under the weight of its internal management malpractices less than a year later (Chia & Synnott, 2009). Those who rated Enron highly for reputation earlier on could not possibly have known what was going on inside the company, they only saw its good results on the outside and hence assumed that the company had a good reputation. Thus, without any significant personal interaction and direct ties to the organisation, person, or issue, reputation (hence referred to as 'entity') is actually superficial. In this case, relationships are actually more relevant, because the entity is now judge by the quality of its interaction with its publics.

Image, on the other hand, translates to 形象(xing xiang) in Mandarin. This shows that it is related to form (形) and symbology (象), more of visual elements of which the construction of meaning is handled by human cognition. Solely working on a positive image does not make the organisation appear any better, because whatever its efforts may be, it will certainly be regarded with suspicion by some (the publics are not stupid, to say the least). Grunig (1993, as cited in Chia & Synnott, 2009) declares that such symbolism should go hand in hand with boosting relationships that actually have substance so as to actually contribute meaningfully to the company. Thus, maintaining a positive image the right way actually contributes to the company's reputation!

On a side note, I found the bit on corporate identity structures interesting, which the text says is partially a function of the structure of the organisation itself and can be used to analyse what the organisation's strategy (in building reputation and also marketing). We are introduced to three approaches: the monolithic approach, the endorsed approach, and the branded approach.

The monolithic approach is based on using a single corporate identity in whatever activity the organisation is involved in. The example mentioned in the book, about Virgin Group, which espouses its brand values of fun, innovation and value for money in all of its industries. I believe Sir Richard Branson himself is also part of the monolith, as can be seen from reports on his actions from time to time - the most recent being his loss of a bet to AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes and having to dress up as a air stewardess to serve on board an AirAsia flight. That's fun, isn't it? (View the article here).

Endorsement, on the other hand, is to feature the parent company's logo on each brand it produces but to put the spotlight on the individual brand itself. Nestlé is the example cited here, with its brand products Milo, KitKat, Carnation milk and so on. Since each of these products (packaged food) are well known and of quality, it also implies Nestlé's status as a premier producer of said items and its commitment to continue doing so. This seems like the strategy for divisionalised organisations to follow.

The last approach is the branded approach, which focuses solely on the individual brands itself with few or no links to the parent company. Procter & Gamble and its various brands in various industries (hair care, shavers, food, etc.) is cited, and I believe this approach is usually followed by conglomerates which own businesses in many sectors; it would make it difficult to fit a particular identity of the parent company to the different industries which are not related to one another.

Thus ends the ninth post.