In the organizational field, reputation is the recognition of stakeholders towards a company or institution in meeting their expectations, said Dr. Justo Villafañe, father of reputation. According to him, “reputational risk is any serious conduct that disappoints those expectations.” However, beyond the concepts and regardless of whether reputation must be managed and that this applies to both individuals and organizations, be it companies, institutions, representative bodies, governments or assistance entities, reputation is linked to conduct. . It has to do with what others perceive of a person or organization.
So, reputation is built or destroyed on a day-to-day basis with the behavior that we observe and the perception that our interlocutors or those of the organization of the entity that we represent have of it. Whether they intend to or not, people and organizations have a reputation with their interlocutors, derived from their perception of their conduct. In summary, we can affirm that we all have the reputation that we build on a day-to-day basis with our actions.
When reputation is managed, behavior is induced and information is disseminated based on the perception that one wants to build in each of the people or audiences with which a company or person interacts, in accordance with the objectives it intends to achieve. In plain terms, organizations and people build their reputation on a daily basis, voluntarily or involuntarily, with the behavior they observe before their interlocutors.
If the above is considered, logic tells us that both individuals and companies or institutions would strive to build a good reputation, but this is not entirely true.
Who could be interested in building a bad reputation? Examples abound.
Organized crime organizations come to mind, intentionally building a bad reputation to be feared and to get let go and be seen as heartless and radical; but on the other hand, they require the good will of the communities in which they are established, for this reason they give away groceries and toys to the residents of the area and sometimes contribute resources to improve the infrastructure of the populations.
The corridos that evoke the “feats” of drug traffickers, who seek to justify them or position us as fearsome beings but benefactors of some communities, do not go unnoticed; the lyrics of the song La Nopalera, written by Marcial Alejandro, which normalizes the actions of criminals; nor the expression of the actress Isela Vega: “what does one more stain on a reputation like mine matter”, boasting of her bad reputation as a differentiator among other actors, combining the perception she has as an actress with those of the characters she played in his long and fruitful film career.
It is true that sometimes -as people or as companies- actions are taken without taking into account the impact that this will have on the perception of the interlocutors and therefore on the reputation. Organizational behavior is the sum of the daily actions of each of the members of the company or institution itself. Both an inappropriate response from the receptionist, the poor treatment of customers by a salesperson, and the fact that a minister has obtained her professional title by plagiarizing a thesis have an impact on reputation. For this reason, it is essential to start reputation management by alienating the conduct of each of the members of the company or institution with the institutional philosophy, through regulations that make explicit what is expected of them, aligned with their objectives.
Just as there is an indelible fingerprint of everything we publish, it is also indelible how we act, since it leaves a perennial imprint on our interlocutors, which will shape their opinions and attitudes towards the company or towards ourselves.