Studiequestions organizations in the media
LECTURE 1
Rainey, Backoff & Levine (1976)
1. Wat zijn de belangrijkste verschillen tussen publieke en private organisaties? Noem er vier en leg ze uit.
- Environmental factors:
1. Degree of market exposure: less market exposure leads to less incentive to cost reduction,
operating efficiency, effective performance, lower allocation efficiency, lower availability of market
indicators and information.
2. Legal, formal constraints; more constraints on procedures, spheres of operations. Greater tendency
to proliferation of formal specifications and controls. More external soureces of formal influence, and
greater fragmentation of those sources.
3. Political influences: greater diversity and intensity of external informal influences on decisions.
Greater need for support of consistencies (client groups, sympathetic formal authorities)
- Organization-Environment Transactions
1. Coerciveness: more likely that participation in consumption and financing of services will be
unavoidable or mandatory (government has unique sanctions and coercive powers)
2. breadth of impact: broader impact, greater symbolic significance of actions of public administrators
(wider scope of concern public interest)
3. Unique public expectations (greater public expectation that public officcials act with more fairness,
responsiveness, accountability and honesty)
- Internal structures and processes
1. Complexity of objectives, evaluation and decision criteria
2. Authority relations and the role of the administrator; less autonomy,flexibility, more political,
expository role for top managers
3. organizational performance: more cautious, less innovative, more frequent turnover of top leader
due to elections
4. incentives and incentive structures: greater difficulty in devising incentives for effective and
efficient performance
5. personal characteristics of employees
zie schema publiek/privaat)
Deephouse & Suchman (2008)
2) Explain ‘legitimacy’ in your own words.
Legitimacy is a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or
appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs and definitions,
dimension, subjects and sources
It means that an organization can be criticized on many levels
An organization can do something that is illegitimate in the eyes of the public, but legimit in the eyes of the
organization (ontgroening studentenverenigingen)
3) Explain ‘subjects of legitimation’ and ‘sources of legitimacy’ in your own words.
‘Subjects of legitimation’ are those social entities, structures, actions, and ideas whose acceptability is being
assessed. Here, we use ‘subjects’ for several reasons. First, this term is both familiar and encompassing.
Second, it reflects the idea that legitimacy is socially constructed and emerges out of the subject’s relation to
other rules, laws, norms, values, and cognitive frameworks in a larger social system. Third, it serves as a
reminder that legitimacy can be quite subjective at times, particularly when an organization is seeking to gain
or defend legitimacy in the face of opposition (Ashforth & Gibbs, 1990; Suchman, 1995). Finally, subjects aren’t
necessarily passive but instead may be active in creating legitimacy. ‘An act, a rule, a procedure, a routine, a
distribution, a position, a group or team, a group’s status structure, teamwork, a system of positions, an
authority structure, an organization, organizational symbols, an organization’s form, practices, services,
programs, a regime, a system of power, and a system of inequality (to name a few).’ Two additional subjects of
legitimation that have drawn attention in management research recently are company founders and top
management teams.
‘Sources of legitimacy’ are the internal and external audiences who observe organizations and make legitimacy
assessments focused on those ‘who have the capacity to mobilize and confront the organization,’ not so much
,in terms of power but in authority over cultural theory. They classified these sources into two basic groups. The
first are those who ‘have standing and license, derived from the organization’s legitimating account of itself’,
most commonly the State. The second are those who have collective authority over what is acceptable theory
(e.g., lawyers, accountants, intellectuals).
4) Explain the differences between the concepts of ‘legitimacy’ and ‘reputation’ in your own
words.
1. Legitimacy is a dichotomous, non-rival, homogenizing tends to attach to organizations that share a
certain form, and is political (je accepteerd alle universiteiten en richt je niet op 1 die goed is en 1 die
fout is )
2. Status is a categorical, group rival, segregating tends to attach to self-aware groups ans is honoric
(reflects cultural norms)
3. Reputation concerns the link between the past and future behavirour, is continupus, differentiating,
tends to attach to individual actors and is economic,
5) Why are legitimacy and reputation important for organisations?
legitimation is largely a question of ‘satisficing’ to an acceptable level, and the absence of negative ‘problems’
is more important than the presence of positive achievements. Indeed, positive feedback loops and a ‘logic of
confidence’ (Meyer & Rowan, 1977) tend to produce win-win ceremonies of mutual affirmation among
legitimate actors. Because it is linked to authority, legitimacy generally produces a taken-for-granted right to
act and command within a particular sphere of activity.
More so than either legitimacy, reputation involves an explicit extrapolation from past to future behavior. Thus,
strictly speaking, reputations can be as multidimensional and idiosyncratic as the behaviors that they
summarize.10 Certainly, reputation can extend beyond product and service quality (the focus of most economic
discussions of reputation), to include being a tough competitor, a good place to work, an environmentally
sensitive manufacturer, etc.
Einwiller, Carroll & Korn (2009)
6) Explain the six dimensions of corporate reputation.
Five cognitive dimensions: products & services, financial performance, managements vision and leadership,
workplace environment, corporate social responsibility.
One emotional dimension: emotional appeal.
7) What are the most important findings of this study?
Only information about a firm for which individuals depend on the news media to learn about has an influence
on stakeholders ’evaluations of the firm. Whereas individuals are not dependent on the news media to gather
information on automobile products (because individuals see them on the streets everyday), they are
dependent thereon to learn about firms ’social and environmental responsibility. Consequently, the way in
which the news media covered the focal firm on this dimension related to stakeholders ’evaluations of the firm
on this dimension.
8) What are the implications of this study for corporate reputation management?
Firms are advised to be aware of and systematically analyze their stakeholders ’need for orientation and media
dependencies. Which reputation dimensions are important to stakeholders and for which dimensions do they
need the news media to learn about them? This knowledge is essential in developing fi rms ’media strategies
for enhancing corporate reputation. It shows communication managers which dimensions they should place
emphasis for enhancing evaluative perceptions of specifi c stakeholder groups, thereby rendering media
relations more effective.
Wæraas & Byrkjeflot (2012)
9) What is the relation between strategy, self-presentation, and measurement (figure 1) in the
context of reputation management?
Although the understanding of the basic tenets of reputation management may vary from writer to writer,
there is a rather consistent logic of “good” principles for reputation management underlying those tenets.
According to this logic, the activity implies a stepwise approach that involves bridging the gap between a
desired and an actual image of the organization. Three steps are recurring themes: (1) The formulation of
, strategy, (2) self-presentation, 8 and (3) measurement (Figure 1).1 We refer to these steps as an organizational
recipe (Røvik 2002) for reputation management
10) Explain the politics problem in your own words.
First, what is not considered in the reputation management recipe is to what extent the leadership and the
employees actually may be in a position freely to choose strategy or identity. Contextual factors related to the
political nature of public organizations impose constraints on the degrees of freedom in strategic matters.
public orgainisations are connected to a political, superordinate level
provides the organization with a mission
mission cannot be changed by the organization itself
political processes interfere with how public organisations are run
11) Explain the consistency problem in your own words.
Appears when demands are conflicting; Despite the fact that many organizations are fragmented in terms of
the number of professions, as well as culturally, structurally, and demographically, the challenges of creating
consistency in the reputation platform are rarely addressed. This is especially the case in the public sector
where the contradictions between alternative policies, and between policy development and implementation,
can be considerable.
12) Explain the charisma problem in your own words.
Not all organizations, especially in the public sector, can build emotional appeal, and few have the autonomy to
“speak freely” or otherwise act independently of the political level. Furthermore, there are limits as to how
distinctively public organizations may portray themselves, as they usually are required by law to behave in
certain ways to ensure similarity in services offered.
13) Explain the uniqueness problem in your own words.
Legitimacy, which is aided by similarity, is also a strong concern (Suchman 1995). In general, legitimacy
concerns pressure an organization to seek similarity with its peers (DiMaggio and Powell 1983, Meyer and
Rowan 1977), but legitimacy is particularly crucial for public sector organizations (Brunsson 1989).
What are the differences, how do you stand out as a ministery? You can’t say that you are better bc that
suggest that the others are bad.
14) Explain the excellence problem in your own words.
However, the excellence goal, as it is defined by these rankings, is not necessarily within reach for public
organizations. This is due to limitations in the way in which they operate, and to their purpose and mission. As
a result, public organizations are more likely to score poorly on reputation rankings than private organizations.
It follows that most public organizations will struggle trying to acquire an excellent reputation.
If you want to excel, you need to say that the other are not that good you cannot do that
15) Which new insights does this article give you regarding the differences in reputation
management between public and private organisations?
Public organizations are not as “complete” as their private sector counterparts because they lack the autonomy
necessary to operate as independent organizational actors. Public organizations cannot manage their
reputation in the same way as they can manage their personnel, structures, and resources, and even then they
are constrained by political and contextual factors. In fact, pushing for ever higher levels of consistency,
uniqueness, charisma, and excellence may make the social 29 standing of reputation-seeking public
organizations worse and undermine established trust relations: A public agency that seeks to appear more
consistent than it is by defining a coherent platform with validity for the entire organization may find itself in a
situation where some of its major voices and identities are repressed.
LECTURE 2
Laskin (2009)
1) Explain the concept of public relations in your own words.
the management of communication between an organization and its publics