Public Sector Organizations and Reputation Management: Five Problems

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article discusses five problems that most public organizations will face when adopting a popular, yet largely unexplored management concept: reputation management. The inherently political nature of public organizations constrains their reputation management strategies. Furthermore, they have trouble connecting with their stakeholders on an emotional level, standing out as unique and differentiated organizations, communicating as coherent bodies, and maintaining excellent reputations. In this article, we examine in depth the nature of these problems and seek to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the possibilities and limitations of reputation management in a public sector context. Notes The step-wise recipe builds on multiple texts: Doorley and Garcia (Citation2007) use six components of reputation management; Griffin (Citation2002) uses 10; Davies et al. (Citation2003) use nine, and Morley (Citation1998) uses 13. Van Riel and Fombrun (Citation2007) do not offer a specific step-wise model, but do strongly emphasize the aligning of the reputation platform with the organization's self-presentation. This is not to say that business owners and managers are completely free to change strategy, mission, and identity, or that they do not face challenges in these processes. For example, private business face pressures from a wide range of constituents and stakeholders that limit their span of action (Pfeffer and Salancik Citation1978). Furthermore, path dependency, rapid changes in the external environments, and institutional embeddedness produce uncertainty and are concerns of general validity (Scott Citation1998). Our argument, therefore, is that there is a difference between public and private organizations concerning their possibilities of choosing strategy that can be attributed to the context of public or private sector. Additional informationNotes on contributorsArild Wæraas Arild Wæraas ([e-mail]) is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Stanford School of Education and an Adjunct Researcher in the Department of Sociology, Political Science, and Planning at the University of Tromsø. His research examines the relationship between organizations and their external environments. More specifically, he is interested in the significance of organizational identity, legitimacy, reputation, and branding for understanding how organizations are influenced by, and seek to influence, their external environments. Haldor Byrkjeflot Haldor Byrkjeflot ([e-mail]) is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo and Adjunct Researcher at the Stein Rokkan Center for Social Research. He has directed research programs on comparative management and public sector reforms and has published on topics relating to comparative employment systems, comparative management, globalization of the MBA, as well as health care reform. Currently he is engaged in projects on reputation management in the public sector as well as accountability reforms and policy developments in welfare states.