Cees van Riel: Reputation management cannot be outsourced

In the past, Will Rogers’ saying “It takes a lifetime to build a good reputation, but you can lose it in a minute” was thought only to apply to individuals – not to companies. Besides, protecting the corporate reputation of your business could be easily outsourced to the communications department, so many organisations put the importance of a good reputation to the back of their minds while they attended to the day-to-day matter of the bottom line. But lives led increasingly online mean that everyone is a publisher – and the risk of reputation damage is omnipresent, amplified and harder to manage effectively. Social networking, websites, and other methods of instant communication mean businesses must be constantly aware of their reputations, and be responsive to any crisis that might have an impact on their reputations. Is there a way to grasp such a ‘soft’ concept as corporate reputation and see its true value? RSM’s Professor Cees van Riel explains what happens when companies realise the importance of reputation.