Comparing Corporate Reputations: League Tables, Quotients, Benchmarks, or Case Studies?
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Volume 5 Number 1
Comparing Corporate Reputations: League Tables, Quotients, Benchmarks, or Case Studies? Dennis Bromley Department of Psychology, University of Liverpool, UK
ABSTRACT Finding valid and practicable methods of assessment and comparison should help to clarify the concept of corporate reputation and contribute to professional applications in this area. Four approaches to assessing and comparing corporate reputations are outlined: league tables, reputation quotients, benchmarks, and case studies. The first three approaches are interrelated, and face conceptual and practical difficulties. The fourth approach outlines two contrasting methods: the case comparison method and the QuasiJudicial (QJ) case method. INTRODUCTION The literature on corporate reputation, and reputation in general, has been growing in recent years (Balmer & Soenen, 1999; Bennett and Gabriel, 2001; Bromley, 1993, 2000a; Fombrun, 1995; Fombrun & van Riel, 1997; Green, 1992; Kay 1993; Mercer, 1996; van Riel et al., 1998; and Whetten, 1997). The present report was stimulated by an article entitled ‘The Reputation Quotient’ (Fombrun, Gardberg & Sever, 2000), and by articles in recent issues of Fortune magazine describing surveys of America’s most admired corporations. Although widely debated and researched, the concept of corporate reputation seems to lack an agreed theoretical basis, and this limits practical applications. What follows is an examination of some of the issues and methods involved in assessing and comparing corporate reputations.
LEAGUE TABLES The best-known league tables of reputation for industrial and commercial companies in the developed world are those published annually in the USA business magazine Fortune. These league tables are based on large samples of respondents of various kinds, mostly executives, directors, and securities analysts, who rate a selection of companies on various attributes relevant to corporate success. These samples can be divided into sub-samples representing different business sectors. Fombrun et al. (2000) draw attention to existing surveys that provide league tables of reputational attributes. The methodological limitations of these surveys include the following:
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biased sampling frames target firms selected by size of revenue restriction to publicly traded companies collusion because of the sector membership of respondents — over-representation of senior managers, directors, and financial analysts in samples — respondents may lack direct experience relevant to some attributes (items in rating scales) — mainly pen and paper mail surveys. A survey may not sample the stakeholder groups best informed about the survey items. The particular attributes on which
Corporate Reputation Review, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2002, pp. 35–50 # Henry Stewart Publications, 1363–3589
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Comparing Corporate Reputations
respondents are asked to rate a number of selected companies vary from one survey to another, but tend to converge on the concept of corporate success (Kay, 1993). Reports describing the su
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