A Multidimensional Reputation Barometer for Public Agencies: A Validated Instrument

Abstract

Reputation is of growing interest for the study of public bureaucracies, but a measurement that can discern between the subdimensions of reputation and is validated on real-life audiences has remained elusive. The authors deductively build, test, and cross-validate a survey instrument through two surveys of 2,100 key stakeholders of the European Chemicals Agency, the European Union chemicals regulator. This empirical tool measures an agency's reputation and its building blocks. This scale represents an important contribution to reputation literature, as it allows scholars to distinguish and measure which aspects of reputation public organizations are "known for" and build their claim to authority on, as well as how the profiles of public organizations differ. The authors find that direct stakeholder contact with the agency is necessary for stakeholders to be able to evaluate the separate dimensions of reputation independently. Evidence for Practice• This study equips practitioners with a reputation barometer tailored to the public sector. It allows them to measure the reputation of their organization, in a differentiated fashion, among different stakeholder groups. • While public organizations increasingly engage in reputation management activities, a potential caveat that emerges from our exercise is that managers might be steering in non-astute directions. While our study shows that, as for private actors, "performance matters," procedural and moral aspects also weigh heavily in the eyes of stakeholders when it comes to public regulators. • To secure a positive organizational image and the authority crucial for public agencies to operate, the performance management turn in the public sector may need to be supplemented by an enhanced organizational attention to procedural and moral aspects.

Organizational Reputation in the Public Administration: A Systematic Literature Review

“…This finding is significant as audiences are the core of reputation, and for public organizations it is crucial to select and gauge the perceptions of their most relevant ones over time (Christensen and Gornitzka 2019; Maor 2020). In this regard, the Overman, Busuioc, and Wood's (2020) study is outstanding—they measured 13 internal and external audiences of the European Chemicals Agency.…”

“…In the second group, content analysis of the media coverage (e.g., Maor and Sulitzeanu‐Kenan 2013, 2016), interviews with different audiences (e.g., Groenleer 2014), surveys (e.g., Capelos et al 2016), or standardized instruments designed to measure reputation in public administration specifically (e.g., Lee and Van Ryzin 2019; Overman, Busuioc, and Wood 2020) were used for this purpose.…”

“…Over the past two decades, scholars from different disciplines have shown the impact of organizational reputation (OR) in public administration, making it an area of research that has received growing scholarly attention (Lee and Van Ryzin 2019; Overman, Busuioc, and Wood 2020). OR is an intangible asset that plays a critical role in public organizations by strengthening bureaucratic power and autonomy, as well as reducing threats to their legitimacy (Carpenter 2001, 2010; Carpenter and Krause 2012).…”

Employer Branding and Recruitment: Social Media Field Experiments Targeting Future Public Employees

“…It is vital for public employers to be visible and distinct in their employer branding, as potential recruits are often simply unaware of potential employers (Baum and Kabst 2014). Employer branding measures should also be compared across channels (Fay and Zavattaro 2016), and the way in which they interact with public employers’ reputation (Overman, Busuioc, and Wood 2020) should be examined.…”

Enacting Accountability Under Populist Pressures: Theorizing the Relationship Between Anti-Elite Rhetoric and Public Accountability

“…Studies have also shown that bureaucrats experience competing reputational concerns (sector, agency, ministry, cabinet), and that the focus of reputational concerns varies according to seniority and task environment (Kolltveit et al, 2019). Moreover, "reputation" is not monolithic, but encompasses a range of technical, procedural, moral, and performative forms (Carpenter, 2010;Overman et al, 2020). Building on these insights, it is anticipated that under conditions of populist pressure, manifest through anti-elite rhetoric, bureaucrats will become highly concerned with their procedural or technical reputation as they seek to defend their legitimacy as impartial administrators and experts.…”