The IABC Handbook of Organizational Communication: A Guide to Internal Communication, Public Relations, Marketing, and Leadership

Building Reputation: Integrity is Everything

Before discussing how to build a reputation, it is useful to determine what reputation is. From the perspective of organizational communications: “Reputation means how positively, or negatively, a company or similar institution is perceived by its key stakeholders—the people or entities that the company or institution relies on for its success. For many for-profit companies, typical stakeholders might include customers, employees, suppliers, or financial analysts. For government or political entities … stakeholders are, above all, the electorate” (Gaines-Ross, 2008, p. 6).

Given that an organization has a number of stakeholders, it is likely that its reputation means different things to each. Indeed, ...