Reputation Capital: Building and Maintaining Trust in the 21st Century

• … release reputation bearers from the burden of being constantly mo- tored and reduce the likelihood of government or public supervision and control. • … strengthen client trust, ease the recruitment and retention of capable employees and improve access to capital markets or attract investors. • … legitimate positions of power and build up reserves of trust which - lowed companies and politicians – but also researchers and journalists – to put their issues on the public agenda, present them credibly and mould them in their own interests. But a fear of loss is not the only reason for the steadily increasing - portance of reputation in corporate management today (or more especially, in the minds of top management). Rather, the main reason is that corporate reputation has shifted from being an unquantifiable ‘soft’ factor to a me- urable indicator in the sense of management control. And it is a variable that is obviously relevant to a company’s performance: recent studies by the European Centre for Reputation Studies and the Ludwig-Maximilians- Universität of Munich compared the stock market performance of a port- lio of the top 25% of reputation leaders (based on regular reputation me- urements in the wider public) with that of the German DAX 30 stock m- ket index. The results show that a portfolio consisting of reputation leaders 1 outperformed the stock market index by up to 45% – and with less risk. Fig. 1. Performance of ‘reputation portfolios’ vs.

Joachim Klewes is Senior Partner of Pleon and an associate professor at the Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf. His over 25 years of expertise include major assignments in the fields of organisational consulting, corporate change and crisis management, as well as corporate communications. He is a founding partner of the opinion research institute com.X and a frequent writer, publisher and speaker.

Robert Wreschniok is a Senior Consultant at Pleon and is responsible for Reputation Management and Stakeholder Dialogue. After completing his M.A. in International Relations he received a certification for Strategic Foundation Management from the University of Basel. He is a board member of the European Centre for Reputation Studies and Spokesman of the Private Institute of Foundation Law.

Pleon is Europe's leading communications consultancy, creating and implementing strategies for private and public sector organisations around the world. The agency has 33 branded offices with more than 1,000 employees in 16 European countries and associate agencies in ten countries across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Pleon was recently named "European Consultancy of the Year" by the Holmes Report

Joachim Klewes is Senior Partner of Pleon and an associate professor at the Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf. His over 25 years of expertise include major assignments in the fields of organisational consulting, corporate change and crisis management, as well as corporate communications. He is a founding partner of the opinion research institute com.X and a frequent writer, publisher and speaker.

Ralf Langen is Managing Partner of Pleon Germany and European Head of Pleon’s Change & Transformation Practice. He has been a communications management professional for more than 15 years both on the industry side and as a consultant. He specialises in change management, and crisis and issues management. He is also the founder and chairman of the European Centre for Reputation Studies (ECRS).

Pleon is Europe's leading communications consultancy, creating and implementing strategies for private and public sector organisations around the world. The agency has 33 branded offices with more than 1,000 employees in 16 European countries and associate agencies in ten countries across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Pleon was recently named "European Consultancy of the Year" by the Holmes Report and "Best Public Relations Agency" in The 2008 International Business Awards.