The relationship between reputation rankings and formal reputation management programmes in South African organisations

Over the last decade the concept of corporate reputation has received extensive coverage from numerous angles with a growing body of publications, specialist agencies, conferences, workshops, guidelines and awards on this topic emerging from all over the world. In recent years The King Report on Governance for South Africa 2009 and the King Codes of Governance Principles (King III) mandated South African companies ’ boards to acknowledge and appreciate that stakeholders’ perceptions affect a company’s reputation. As a result of the reputation phenomenon various company reputation rankings are published every year, based on an overall perceptual measure of corporate reputation. However, corporate reputation management is still an immature discipline in South Africa and a recent study confirmed that although South African directors acknowledge that a good corporate reputation is valuable to any organisation, they hold very different views as to whether a good reputation really offers a competitive advantage; as well as the actual dimensions that constitute corporate reputatio