Creating Corporate Reputations: Identity, Image, and Performance

Recent research in business strategy suggests that corporate reputations are a valuable strategic asset for every company. Good reputations have been shown to help firms attain and sustain superior financial performance in their industry. This book outlines how high-status companies become corporate super brands, and it presents managers with a framework to proactively enhance their corporations' desired reputation. While many books concentrate on advertising or corporate identity as the primary tools for reputation enhancement, this book provides a more expansive and realistic picture of what it takes to build a corporate super brand. One of its key contributions is that it emphasizes the roles of customer value and organizational culture in the reputation-building process and exposes the limitations of corporate advertising, sponsorships, and minor corporate identity change. Drawing on more than fifteen years of academic research, executive seminars, and consulting experience, Grahame Dowling suggests ways to improve the corporate reputations that different groups of stakeholders hold of your company. He also describes how to avoid many of the traps that catch unwary managers who try to improve their company's desired reputation.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Part I: Corporate Reputations 1: Corporate Reputation Value: Good Really is Better Than Bad 2: Stakeholders: Each Group Holds a Different Image and Reputation 3: How Corporate Images are Formed: Identifying the Pieces of the Jigsaw Puzzle Part II: Factors Which Affect Corporate Images 4: Vision and Mission: The Soul of Corporate Reputation 5: Formal Company Policies: The Guiding Hands 6: Organizational Culture: The Invisible Web 7: Corporate Communication: What to Say 8: Corporate Identity: What You See is Often Less Than What You Get 9: Country, Industry, Partner, and Brand Images: Leveraging Secondary Associations to Enhance a Corporate Image Part III: Managing Corporate Images and Reputations 10: Measuring Images and Reputations: What Do Stakeholders Actually Think? 11: Managing and Changing Corporate Images: It Can be Done 12: The Crisis: Communication Strategies to Protect Desired Images and Reputations 13: Recap: Avoiding the Twelve Most Common Traps

About the Author :
Grahame Dowling is Professor of Marketing at the Australian Graduate School of Management. He is one of Australia's leading researchers and writers on marketing and its importance in today's successful corporations and organizations. He has published over 100 papers in the academic and business press dealing with a wide range of marketing topics. In 1997, Grahame Dowling was named the Distinguished Marketing Researcher in Australia and New Zealand for his work on the adoption and diffusion of innovations. He is currently a member of the editorial boards for the journals Corporate Reputation Review and the Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing.

Review :
Clear writing style and concise arguments ... thought-provoking and extremely readable ... Whether you are a manager, an academic, or just an interested general reader, Creating Corporate Reputations will offer many new insights into the important role that corporate reputation plays in the success of business Academy of Management Executive Well written and interesting. Dowling does an excellent job of explaining why managers should spend time and resources to develop the organizational reputation Academy of Management Executive Dowling has created a book that is widely applicable to a variety of business situations. Creating Corporate Reputations will appeal to many business and nonprofit managerial audiences Academy of Management Executive Dowling has written a book offering fresh and unique insights into how managers create value both for their organizations and for their stakeholders Academy of Management Executive