Week 9: Reputation Management & Crisis Perspective

1. Reputation Management

Reputation Management is defined as the process of tracking an organization's actions and other people's opinions about those action.

As the saying goes, success does not happen overnight but failure does. And, critical moments for business and other organizations never goes away. So, in this case reputation management comes in 3 forms: Building, Maintenance and Recovery!

• Building reputation for a business that is just getting started

• Maintaining reputation means keeping the company’s good image superior in the public eye is called

• Recovery will only happen if the organization has gotten bad reputation, then the recovery portion is important.

I have identified 1 area of reputation management - through power. Attaining power and gaining influence has always been problematic in the public relations line. According to Scott Cutlip (1997), some critics charge that public relations exerts power through propaganda techniques that distort society to serve narrow and even dysfunctional interests. And according to the survey conducted by Berger and Reber (2006), the most important issue in public relations listed by professionals was “to gain a seat at the decision-making table”. Hence, the failure of securing a seat at the decision- making table will most probably affect an organization negatively, not only, an individual public relations professionals’ self- esteem but also the profession’s legitimacy as a strategic management function. And yes, I agree that power plays an important role in public relations as it helps to get things done.

2. Crisis!

Barton (1993) defines crisis as a major, unpredictable event that has potentially negative result which can badly damage the reputation of an organization.

I came across this case study: Massacre at Virginia Tech.

The shootings caused a major uproar. And during this devastating crisis, many schools promoted safety campaigns. Some of these campaigns are trying to increase awareness that violence can happen anywhere by reducing optimistic bias in their students. The purpose of these safety campaigns is to widen the gap between conflicting cultural worldviews by reducing optimistic bias, and thereby, increase the likelihood of a violent act. Schools across the region used the shooting as a learning experience as to what could have been done better to protect the people on campus that day.

To better manage this crisis and restore trust, many universities have implemented new ways of warning faculty, students, and staff when there is a violent incident on campus. This consists of sending text messaging blasts and e-mails, along phone calls, and not forgetting television and radio announcements. Universities also made it a point to promote safety on their campuses through brochures distributed in the resident halls. For instance, one of the brochures recommend that students not walk alone after dark and caution students not to stay in academic buildings late at night.

From another point of view, while these campaigns may be well-intentioned, it could have adverse effects. By decreasing optimistic bias the campaigns are encouraging the acceptance that school shooting scan. Essentially, the campaigns created an awareness and remind students they can be shot at school! In this context, terror management studies have repeatedly shown that messages which remind individuals of death cause anxiety. High mortality salience has been shown to increase stereotyping, derogation, hostility, and aggression towards others. I have found out that Miller & Landau (2005) argued that campaigns aimed solely at reducing optimistic bias to encourage self-protective measures could be increasing attacks on alternative worldviews. Hence, those who do not fit the socially constructed norms of the school’s climate will be outcast and diminished from the normal group. These attacks could then encourage a counter attack, potentially to the point at which an individual seeks to eliminate the threatening worldview.

From this case study, I think that crisis management is vital - it has to be handled properly else, though well-intentioned, the campaigns might send out wrong messages, which might cause unnecessary anxiety to the people involved.