Mastering Risk Management

A FRAMEWORK FOR REPUTATION MANAGEMENT

Governance

Reputation management is, at heart, a behavioural issue, both on the part of the stakeholders and the firm. You may remember the words of Professor Mervyn King, which we quoted in Chapter 3, about the critical importance of ‘the tune in the middle and the beat of the feet at the bottom’. The point is not to hand down board initiatives for reputation, but to ensure that everyone understands and lives up to the plain truth that the firm’s reputation is in the hands of all your employees and all those who act on their behalf. They will respond not to formal policies but to ‘tone’; to the attitudes and behaviours of those around them, and those they observe coming from board level. If those are ethical ...