Being All Things to All Customers: Building Reputation in an Institutionalized Field

Abstract

This paper seeks to draw empirical attention to the relationship between legitimacy and reputation in institutionalized fields. Norwegian hospitals find themselves in a strongly institutionalized field and do not want to differentiate from each other, despite seeking a favorable reputation. In order to acquire insights into the conditions that prompt organizations to reject differentiation, we carried out qualitative interviews with the hospitals’ communication directors. Three sets of justifications for not differentiating emerged from an inductive analysis of these interviews. Differentiation is not adapted to the universalistic needs of the hospitals, not in accordance with solidarity norms, and not a pragmatic solution. The analysis suggests that the hospitals face a trade‐off between the contradictory demands of similarity and difference and hence legitimacy and reputation: They renounce the advantage of a unique reputation (i.e. competitive advantage) in order to retain the benefits of conformity (i.e. legitimacy). Implications of these findings for our understanding of the relative salience of legitimacy and reputation and the dynamics between them are discussed.

A Multidimensional Reputation Barometer for Public Agencies: A Validated Instrument

“…As noted earlier, the relevance of reputational concerns has been demonstrated in driving a variety of regulatory behaviors, including the supply of regulatory outputs (Maor and Sulitzeanu‐Kenan ), the duration of drug approval (Carpenter ) or of enforcement decisions (Maor and Sulitzeanu‐Kenan ), enforcement practices (Etienne ), regulatory risk assessment practices (Rimkutė ), turf management and regulatory cooperation (Maor ; Moynihan ), strategic use of communications (Gilad, Maor, and Bloom ; Maor, Gilad, and Bloom ), bureaucratic demand for public participation (Moffitt , ), and accountability and political control (Busuioc and Lodge , ). Moreover, the value of the reputational perspective has been demonstrated not only in the regulation context but also with respect to public sector organizations in a variety of forms and contexts, including health care (Wæraas and Sataøen ), higher education (Christensen and Gornitzka ; Christensen, Gornitzka, and Ramirez ), social security (Christensen and Lodge ), police and border management (Busuioc ; Christensen and Lægreid ), and different levels of government—from municipal organizations (Lockert et al ; Wæraas ) to ministries and/or national‐level departments (Lee and Van Ryzin ; Luoma‐Aho ). To an overwhelming degree, empirical studies in this tradition have tended to be either qualitative in‐depth case studies that try to reconstruct reputational processes (e.g., drawing on thick description, historical data, and/or interview data) or quantitative studies that focus on measuring specific reputational aspects (such as “reputational threats” and regulatory responses) rather than organizational reputation as such: “None of the current bureaucratic reputation scholars measure reputation per se, but rather reputational threats as manifested in the media” (Maor , 86).…”

The Effect of Acquisition Synergy on Firm Perfomance moderated by Firm Reputation

“…Consumers will feel that the acquisition of a local company by a foreign company can provide a better-quality product or service because it will be standardized with the acquiring foreign company. Research conducted by Waeraas and Sataøen, (2015) found that operating synergy as an acquisition motive would have a significant positive impact on firm reputation. Companies that make acquisitions in the same field and companies that have a better reputation can be used to raise their own reputation with the aim of raising their own reputation class.…”

“…Whereas (Duan, & Jin, 2019;Duan & Li, 2015;Erel, Jang, & Weisbach, 2015;Hamza et al, 2016;Yaghoubi et al, 2016) examine financial synergy as an acquisition goal to company performance but there is no research that uses firm reputation as a mediator. Based on research by (Cheny & Gayle, 2018;Fong, Lee, & Du, 2013;Hassan, Ghauri, & Mayrhofer, 2018;Jenner, Sautner, & Suchard, 2017;Matarazzo, De Vanna, Lanzilli, & Resciniti, 2017;Sigera & Cahoon, 2018;Waeraas & Sataøen, 2015) operational synergies and financial synergies as acquisition goals have an impact on (Cabral, 2016;Cellier & Chollet, 2016;Chalençon, Colovic, Lamotte, & Mayrhofer, 2017;Erden, Klang, Sydler, & von Krogh, 2015;Gao, Zuzul, Jones, & Khanna, 2017;Haleblian et al, 2017;Popli, Ladkani, & Gaur, 2017;Zavyalova, Pfarrer, Reger, & Hubbard, 2016) firm reputation and have a significant positive relationship on company performance.…”

Challenges of corporate brand building and management in a state owned enterprise

“…they deal with a multiplicity of stakeholders (Balmer, 2012;Hatch and Schultz, 2003). Branding in the public sector is, thus, complex and SOEs struggle in their search to gain both legitimacy and reputation (Sataøen and Waeraas, 2015;Waeraas, 2008;Waeraas and Byrkjeflot, 2012;Waeraas and Sataøen, 2015). In particular, five main problems may emerge, specifically related to politics, consistency, charisma, uniqueness and excellence (Waeraas and Byrkjeflot, 2012).…”