Senior Business Executives See Communication and Reputation as a Crucial Part of Their Leadership Role
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Volume 8 Number 3
RI Insights Senior Business Executives See Communication and Reputation as a Crucial Part of Their Leadership Role Ron van der Jagt Boer & Croon Corporate Communication, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
ABSTRACT Between Christmas 2004 and summer 2005 the Dutch strategic communication company Boer & Croon Corporate Communication conducted research under the title ‘Executives on Reputation’, into the views held by the senior management of the largest Dutch companies on corporate communication and reputation management. The main conclusion is plain. Chairmen see this as an extremely relevant field and as an important part of their own leadership role. At the same time, they are not impressed with communication professionals.
KEYWORDS: reputation management, corporate communication, dominant logic
TWENTY-FIVE TOP EXECUTIVES The core of the ‘Executives on Reputation’ research is made up of a series of personal interviews with 25 top executives from the larger Dutch companies; from Peter Bakker from TNT to Rein Willems from Shell (see Table 1). The research is about the question of how important the reputation of larger companies is in the opinion of their managing directors, how relevant this is, how they see corporate communication as a means of establishing and protecting a good reputation and what
experiences, wishes and challenges they have for the future in this area. The final report gives a clear picture of the ideas in this area at the top of ‘corporate Netherlands’, with a large number of analyses illustrated by, at times, very lively comment. RESEARCH MODEL AND METHODOLOGY This research project has all the characteristics of qualitative research, using semistructured interviews. The objective was to find a pattern in the vision of senior executives on corporate communication and reputation management. So this project also had the characteristics of an explorative survey: discovering a way of thinking. To give this research project a solid structure, the following model has been used. In the personal interviews, executives were asked for their vision on 15 different themes. Based on that, the ‘dominant logic’ has been defined: individually first and based on that for the whole group. Following this, an analysis was made to see what antecedents had the strongest influence. In this research project, the choice has been made to only use eight company characteristics as possible antecedents which could explain the dominant logic and predict the vision on the 15 themes.
Corporate Reputation Review, Vol. 8, No. 3, 2005, pp. 179–186 # Henry Stewart Publications, 1363–3589
Page 179
Communication and Reputation
Table 1: The 25 Top Executives Interviewed Senior executive
Company
Peter Bakker, CEO Willy Biewinga, CEO Michiel Boersma, CEO Luc Dahlhuis, CEO Wout Dekker, CEO Boudewijn Dessing, CEO Maarten Dijkshoorn, COO Carel van den Driest, CEO Herman Hazewinkel, CEO Guus Hoefsloot, CEO Herman Hulst, CEO Rokus van Iperen, CEO Maurice Lippens, chairman Mike Leers, CEO Jos Nijhuis, CEO Ben Noteboom, CEO Henk
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