Introduction
Reputation management
section
Practitioner perceptions
of corporate reputation:
an empirical
investigation
Roger Bennett and
Rita Kottasz
The authors
Roger Bennett and Rita Kottasz are based at London
Guildhall University, London, UK.
Keywords
Coporate image, Public relations
Abstract
Owner-managers or managing directors of 106 UK public
relations consultancies completed a questionnaire
concerning the extent of their firms' client reputation
management activities and their attitudes and opinions
about reputational work. The results suggested
widespread interest in the concept and practice of
reputation management as an area of activity separate
and distinct from other aspects of PR. However,
respondents expressed concerns about the existence of
barriers to the implementation of reputation management
programmes within client companies. The executives
most likely to agree with the ``academic'' definition of
corporate reputation were those whose consultancies
offered a large number of reputation management
services; who believed that the demand for these services
was about to rise; and who clearly distinguished between
reputational and general PR activities. Only a small
percentage of the sample disagreed with the proposition
that most innovations in the field of reputation
management were attributable to practitioners rather
than academics.
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Corporate Communications: An International Journal
Volume 5 . Number 4 . 2000 . pp. 224±234
# MCB University Press . ISSN 1356-3289
224
Few developments in the fields of corporate
and marketing communications have been the
subject of greater academic interest, scrutiny
and analysis than the implementation of
techniques and procedures for managing the
reputations of companies; as opposed to
corporate image, corporate identity and general
public relations work (see for example
Fombrun and Shanley, 1990; Fombrun, 1996;
Fombrun and Van Riel, 1997; Whetten, 1997;
Cooper, 1999 for details of relevant literature).
One cause of this upsurge of interest in
corporate reputation has been the conspicuous
successes achieved by a number of high-profile
crisis management programmes (see Barton,
1993; Argenti, 1997), in conjunction with
firms' increasing desires to insure their
corporate images against adverse publicity
potentially arising from future disasters.
According to Poe (1998, p. 16), moreover, the
``age of nonstop mergers, corporate takeovers
and raging employee distrust'' has led to the
reputations of businesses and their leaders
routinely ``being shot down by the press, stock
market analysts and other professional firing
squads'' across all industry sectors. Thus,
prudent companies will proactively seek to
obviate the detrimental impact of possible bad
publicity in the future, and the creation of a
sound reputation is one means for achieving
this aim. Another reason for the rise of
reputation management has of course been the
growing realisation that the possession of an
excellent reputation can significantly enhance
financial performance. Cooper (1999), for
instance, suggests that between 8 per cent and
15 per cent of a company's share price may be
ascribed to corporate reputation. This might be
due to the ability of a high-reputation firm to
attract customers, investors, and excellent
employees; to motivate its suppliers; and to
incur less hostility from regulatory bodies
(Fombrun and Shanley, 1990; McMillan and
Joshi, 1997).
This paper presents the results of an
empirical study of the extent to which
reputation management has been taken up as
a separate and substantial aspect of PR among
a sample of UK public relations
consultancies. Hence it offers an insight into
current practice vis-aÁ-vis reputation
management at the ``grass roots'' level, i.e.
among PR practitioners operationally
responsible for assisting client firms to
 Practitioner perceptions of corporate reputation
Roger Bennett and Rita Kottasz
manage their corporate communications. As
well as contributing to knowledge about PR
consultancies' views and activities in this
rapidly expanding area, the research has a
more general significance considering the
enhanced role of PR recently observed at both
the marketing and corporate communications
levels (Kitchen, 1996), and the likelihood,
according to Pinkleton and Austin (1999),
that fast changing commercial environments
are actively forcing PR firms to re-examine
fundamentally their facilities and services in
order to demonstrate improved effectiveness.
Pinkleton and Austin (1999, p. 85) argue that
nowadays PR consultants whose past
successes were based on practical
understanding of local media, excellent
contacts and powerful media skills
increasingly ``find themselves struggling to
maintain client confidence in an era of greater
programme accountability and fewer financial
resources''.
The research also examined whether the PR
executives participating in the study generally
agreed or disagreed with the academic view of
what ``corporate reputation'' involves. Note
that UK (as opposed to US) approaches to
PR have traditionally regarded the terms
``public relations'' and ``reputation'' as
synonymous. The UK Institute of Public
Relations, for example, defines PR as ``about
reputation'', and PR practice as ``the
discipline which looks after reputation''
(Institute of Public Relations, 1999, p. 1).
Equally, however, the volume of academic
literature dedicated to reputation
management as a distinct and relatively self-
contained field of study has expanded
enormously in recent years (see Fombrun and
Van Riel, 1997; Balmer, 1998); numerous
books have appeared about corporate
reputation, and academic and other
conferences committed to reputational
matters have proliferated. To what extent
have contemporary academic interpretations
of and approaches towards reputation
management spread among senior PR
practitioners? This is a question worthy of
investigation because, to the degree that
differences of opinion concerning the
meaning of corporate reputation occur
between the academic and practitioner
domains then far greater attention may need
to be given to the dissemination of the
findings of academic research about
reputation management than previously has
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Corporate Communications: An International Journal
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been the case. Other interesting issues are
whether practitioners see reputation
management as nothing more than a
``management fad'' with a strictly limited
lifespan, or a notion not essentially different
from that of ``corporate image''.
Reputation management in theory and
practice
Balmer's (1998) review of the evolution of the
theory of corporate reputation identified three
stages of development. The first phase (in the
1950s) focused on corporate image, giving
way in the 1970s and 1980s to an emphasis
on corporate identity and corporate
communications, and then in the 1990s to a
mounting interest in corporate brand
management and thence reputation.
According to Balmer (1998, p. 971), image
differs from reputation in that whereas the
former concerns the public's ``latest beliefs''
about an organisation, reputation represents a
value judgement about the organisation's
qualities ``built up over a period and focusing
on what it does and how it behaves''. Thus,
reputation has an historical dimension as it
represents ``the estimation of the consistency
over time of an attribute of an entity based on
its willingness and ability to perform an
activity repeatedly in a similar fashion''
(Herbig and Milewicz, 1995, p. 24). These
assessments of past actions may derive from
personal experience; yet equally could result
from word-of-mouth information, a firm's
media profile, or the company's general
public relations. Fombrun and Van Riel
(1997, p. 10) similarly emphasise the
historical nature of reputation which, they
suggest, is a ``subjective, collective assessment
of an organisation's trustworthiness and
reliability'' based on past performance.
Because reputations evolve over time they
cannot be fashioned as quickly as images.
Moreover, an organisation might have a good
reputation (e.g. for providing excellent
products) yet possess a low-impact, old-
fashioned or otherwise inappropriate image.
The reverse could also be true: a strong image
crafted via a powerful organisational identity
programme, advertising, public relations and
integrated marketing communications might
not be matched by a cogent reputation.
``Images'' themselves involve the knowledge,
feelings and beliefs about an organisation that
 Practitioner perceptions of corporate reputation
Roger Bennett and Rita Kottasz
exist in the thoughts of its audiences (see
Hatch and Schultz, 1997), i.e. ``what comes
to mind when one hears the name or sees the
logo'' (Gray and Balmer, 1998, p. 696). This
is not the same as corporate ``identity'', which
relates to the ``self presentation'' of an
organisation and thus consists of the cues that
it offers via its symbols, communications and
other signals (Van Riel, 1995). Rather, image
represents a mental interpretation of an entity
based on these symbols.
A substantial amount of academic research
has been completed into how organisations
manage their reputations (see, for example,
Post and Griffin (1997) and Davies and Miles
(1998) for details of recent literature).
Investigations have focused both on corporate
policies relating to reputation management
(e.g. Schrum and Wuthnow, 1988; Fombrun
and Shanley, 1990; Davies and Miles, 1998;
Gray and Balmer, 1998) and on the
marketing communications themes and
channels employed by organisations engaged
in reputation management (e.g. Wilson,
1985; Herbig and Milewicz, 1995; McMillan
and Joshi, 1997; Fombrun and Rindova,
1998). In contrast, research into how
reputational issues are seen by the PR
consultancies and agencies which service the
corporate sector has been sparse: a disturbing
fact as the PR industry itself recognises that
``there is a consensus among consultants that
corporate reputation management will be
even more important just over ten years from
now'' (Gray, 1999, p. 6). Moreover, the
limited amount of research that has been
undertaken has tended to focus on barriers
and problems inhibiting the adoption of
reputation management within client firms.
Implementation difficulties allegedly include
narrow thinking on the part of marketing
executives, heavy commitments to
conventional corporate image programmes in
conjunction with a reluctance to invest in an
unexplored field, lack of experience of and
expertise in the techniques of reputation
management, budgetary constraints, and
lengthy timetables for research and strategic
planning (Semons, 1998). Schultz and
Ervolder's (1998, p. 30) study of 93 Danish
marketing consultancies (including PR
agencies) noted the difficulties that the
professional suppliers of reputation
management services themselves commonly
experience when ``crossing boundaries'' into
the provision of fresh ``value-based'' services
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such as image/reputation management. The
authors attributed these difficulties in part to
client firms demanding ``familiar and
compartmentalised services'' (Schultz and
Ervolder's, 1998 p. 39) and to their not being
able to grasp the natures of the relationships
between image-related constructs.
The study
An exploratory investigation was deemed
appropriate consequent to the paucity of prior
research in the area. Exploratory studies are
suitable for ``probing new substantive areas
which may rest on still unformalised and
unintegrated theoretical, hypothetical and
methodological arguments'' (Mills, 1959,
p. 32), and where relatively little is known
about an issue (Churchill, 1991, p. 70).
Accordingly, the aim of the study was to
establish frameworks for future analysis rather
than to specify and test particular hypotheses
per se. Information was collected via a mail
questionnaire (reproduced in the Appendix)
comprising four sections. The first part
queried the nature of the reputation
management services offered by the
respondent consultancy. Firms which
undertook dedicated reputational work were
then asked to indicate the extents of their
involvement (sections 2.1 and 2.). This was
followed by a listing of the eight items
incorporated into the Fortune reputation
index and a request to specify whether the
consultancy provided reputation building or
measurement services in relation to any or all
of these headings. The Fortune index is by far
the most commonly used and debated
measure of corporate reputation (see
Fombrun, 1998). It has been criticised for
resting heavily on matters concerned with a
financial orientation (see Caruana, 1996; Van
Riel, 1995, pp. 101-2), yet remains a popular
measure which has been found to perform
reliably across a variety of disparate industry
sectors (see Fombrun and Shanley, 1990;
Cordeiro, 1999).
Section 3 of the questionnaire explored
respondents' perceptions of the levels of client
demand for reputation management services
(items 3.1(a) and 3.2(a), (d) and (e)); their
attitudes towards measurement (3.2(f) and
(h)) and implementation problems (3.1(b) to
(f)); and opinions regarding reputation
management generally. The final section
 Practitioner perceptions of corporate reputation Corporate Communications: An International Journal
Roger Bennett and Rita Kottasz Volume 5 . Number 4 . 2000 . 224±234

Table I Definitions of reputation

Definition Source

1 A reputation can be defined as a bundle of attributes and the interrelationships Andersen et al. (1999)
among them, shared among a group of individuals in a socio-cognitive
community
2 Corporate reputation refers to the perception of an organisation which is built Balmer (1998)
up over a period of time and which focuses on what it does and how it behaves
3 Corporate reputation is the evaluation (respect, esteem, estimation) in which an Dowling (1994)
organisation's image is held by people
4 A corporate reputation is a perceptual representation of a company's past Fombrun (1996)
actions and future prospects that describes the firm's appeal to all of its key
constituents when compared with other leading rivals
5 Corporate reputation is a collective representation of a firm's past actions and Fombrun, and
results that describe the firm's ability to deliver valued outcomes to multiple Rindova, (1996)
stakeholders. It gauges a firm's relative standing both internally with
employees and externally with its stakeholders, in both its competitive and
institutional environments
6 Reputation is a representation of the cumulative judgements of a constituency Fombrun and Shanley,
group over time, based upon socially constructed perceptions of an (1990)
organisation's substantive and symbolic actions
7 Corporate reputation indicates a value judgement about a company's attributes Gray and Balmer,
and evolves over time as a result of consistent performance, reinforced by (1998)
effective communication
8 Reputation is the estimation of the consistency over time of an attribute of an Herbig and Milewicz,
entity. This estimation is based on the entity's willingness and ability to (1995)
perform an activity repeatedly in a similar fashion. An attribute is some specific
part of the entity ± price, quality, marketing skills. Reputation is an aggregate
composite of all previous transactions over the life of the entity, a historical
notion, and requires consistency of an entity's actions over a prolonged time
for its formation
9 A company's reputation ± from a buyer's perception ± consists of the extent to Levitt (1965)
which the firm is well known, good or bad, reliable, trustworthy, reputable and
believable
10 Corporate reputation is a synthesis of the opinions, perceptions, and attitudes Post and Griffin (1997)
of an organisation's stakeholders, employees, customers, suppliers, investors,
community members, activists, media, and other stakeholders
11 A firm's corporate reputation is a shorthand evaluation of the stock of information Schweizer and
about that firm in the possession of a particular actor or group of actors that is Wijnberg (1999)
used by those actors to make decisions, involving a certain degree of risk with
regard to the firm, without feeling the need to collect more information
12 Reputations describe the expectations that key stakeholders have about a Sever and Fombrun
company's products, practices and performance (1992)
13 Corporate reputation refers to a corporation's values which are kept alive in a Smythe et al. (1992)
collective memory of its behaviour, with its leaders responsible for keeping the
vision of its founders fresh
14 Corporate reputation is the outcome of a competitive process in which firms Spence (1974)
signal their key characteristics to constituents to maximise social status
15 Corporate reputation is a set of economic and non-economic attributes ascribed Weigelt and Camerer
to a firm, inferred from the firm's past actions (1988)
16 A company's reputation reflects the history of its past actions Yoon et al. (1993).

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 Practitioner perceptions of corporate reputation
Roger Bennett and Rita Kottasz
presented the executive with an ``academic''
definition of reputation and then asked for
assessments of its usefulness (sec. 4(a) to (d)).
Table I lists 16 definitions of corporate
reputation obtained from a review of
academic literature on the subject and thence
employed to derive the compound statement
appearing in section 4. It can be seen from
Table I that, so far as the academic
community is concerned, reputation has a
cognitive-perceptual dimension (definitions
1 to 4, 6, 7, 9 to 11), an historical dimension
(definitions 2, 4 to 8, 13, 15, 16), and
involves a firm's qualities and behaviour
(definitions 1, 2, 7, 8, 14, 15), stakeholders
(definitions 4 to 6, 10, 12, 14), corporate
image (definitions 3, 4, 9 to 11) and
expectations about how the business will act
in the future (definitions 4, 8, 12). These
elements were synthesised by the authors into
a general definition which was then placed
before five senior academics specialising in
marketing communications. On receipt of
their comments the statement was iteratively
reworded until a consensus that it accurately
reflected the ``academic'' view of corporate
reputation emerged.
The draft questionnaire was pre-tested via
discussions with academic experts in the PR
field plus executives in three leading UK PR
consultancies, and a trial distribution of the
questionnaire to 50 PR firms selected at
random from the sampling frame. After the
pre-test the wording of the questionnaire was
refined and the final version mailed to a
further 355 UK public relations consultancies
selected at random (using the random
number generator available on SPSS) from
Section 4 (``PR Consultancies: UK'') of the
Hollis UK Press and Public Relations Annual
1999. As the purpose of the study was to
obtain an insight into the views of the PR
consultancy sector as a whole, five PR firms
appearing in the sampling frame and known
to specialise exclusively in reputation
management (Shandwick for instance) were
excluded from the survey. Data obtained from
such consultancies could be heavily biased in
favour of all aspects of reputation
management. After a follow-up, responses
were received from 46 chief executives, 16
chairmen and 44 other senior managers of the
businesses approached, representing 26.5 per
cent of the sampling frame. Responses were
scanned for differences between the average
values of the replies received from the earliest
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30 per cent and latest 30 per cent of return
mailings, no significant disparities emerging.
Firms in the sample had an average of nine
employees.
Results
Only 15 per cent of the sample consultancies
stated that they did not offer any of the services
listed in questionnaire section 1.2 (see the
Appendix). The commonest services reported
by the remaining 85 per cent of the firms were
crisis management (78 per cent), the provision
of advice on reputation building strategy (70
per cent), and the completion of surveys and
research to establish how key audiences
perceive clients' reputations (48 per cent).
Around one-third of the respondents recorded
their involvement in reputation measurement
and auditing; similar proportions applied to
each of the other section 1.2 items. About a
quarter of the firms spent less than 10 per cent
of their time on reputation management; a
further 25 per cent spent between 11 per cent
and 20 per cent of their time on the activity.
Only 13 per cent devoted more than half their
time to reputational matters, and just 8 per
cent had a separate person or section solely
employed on client reputation management
(2.2). As regards the elements of the Fortune
reputation index (2.3), the four main areas in
which the consultancies helped clients
promote their reputations were community
and environmental responsibility (54 per cent),
the quality of goods and services (56 per cent),
and innovativeness (41 per cent). The least
reported area was ``long term investment
value'' (13 per cent). Responses to section 3
from the entire 106-strong sample indicated a
division of opinion on whether clients were
generally uninterested in reputation
management (3.1(a)). Twenty-eight per cent
agreed or strongly agreed with this proposition,
44 per cent either disagreed or strongly
disagreed. However, a clear majority (58 per
cent) agreed/strongly agreed that clients will
increasingly demand reputation management
services in the future (item 3.2(a)). There was
general consensus that reputation
management was as vital an ingredient of
business as accounting, finance etc. (3.2(b)),
with 78 per cent of the sample agreeing/
strongly agreeing with the proposition. A
quarter of the sample believed nevertheless
that corporate reputation was nothing more
 Practitioner perceptions of corporate reputation
Roger Bennett and Rita Kottasz
than ``old wine in new bottles'' (as opposed to
43 per cent holding the alternative view ± see
3.2(c)). More than half the sample thought
that reputation management was about to
become as important as corporate image, but
only 5 per cent reported current switches of
client expenditures towards reputation at the
expense of other PR activities (3.2(d) and (e)).
Opinions differed regarding whether
measuring reputation was basically the same as
measuring corporate image. Forty-four per
cent agreed or strongly agreed with this
statement, while 35 per cent held the opposite
view. A similar breakdown applied to item
3.2(g) about whether managing a client's
reputation was comparable to managing its
image. It was the case nonetheless that the
majority of respondents clearly distinguished
reputation management from other PR
activities (3.2(m)), although 31 per cent still
thought there was no need to differentiate
between reputational work and PR generally
(51 per cent disagreed or strongly disagreed
with this position). Likewise, 67 per cent felt
there was a real difference between reputation
management and PR (item 3.2(o)), with just
16 per cent disagreeing. Only 24 per cent of
the sample equated corporate reputation with
corporate identity (3.2(k)). Respondents did
not generally feel that the PR industry had
failed to understand how to manage clients'
reputations (3.2(j)). Also, less than a quarter of
the sample did not believe that reputation
management would require long-term changes
in the ways that PR firms operate (3.2(l)). On
the other hand, respondents were less than
complimentary about their clients' abilities to
participate effectively in reputation
management programmes. Only 20 per cent
disagreed or strongly disagreed with the
proposition that clients frequently lack the
expertise necessary to participate effectively in
reputation management programmes (3.1(b)).
Moreover, 71 per cent saw clients as being so
heavily committed to conventional corporate
image programmes that reputation
management took a back seat (3.1(c)), and
only 18 per cent of the respondents believed
that clients' internal cultures were conducive
to the introduction of reputation management.
The main complaint however was that clients
were reluctant to employ extra staff to
implement relationship management on behalf
of their companies. Eighty-four per cent
agreed/strongly agreed and less than 2 per cent
disagreed with this statement (3.1(f)).
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A majority of the respondents believed that
new ideas concerning reputation management
came from practitioners rather than academics
(52 per cent in favour of statement 3.2(i), 7 per
cent against and 41 per cent having no firm
opinion). However, many more respondents
(64 per cent) agreed or strongly agreed that the
``academic'' definition of corporate reputation
reproduced in section 4 accurately captured
the true meaning of corporate reputation than
disagreed/ strongly disagreed with the
proposition (17 per cent). The difference was
more pronounced among the consultancies
actually offering reputation management (70
per cent in favour and 14 per cent against).
Also, just 8 per cent of the sample regarded the
stated definition as irrelevant to the majority of
their clients, and only 26 per cent disagreed or
strongly disagreed that it offered a sound
foundation for devising reputation
management policies. These results are
heartening from an academic perspective as
they indicate that practitioners in consultancies
most heavily involved in reputational work are
significantly more likely than others to agree
with the academic definition.
Regression analysis
In order to analyse more closely the
determinants of agreement or disagreement
with the academic definition presented in
section 4, a multinomial logistic regression was
completed using the three categories:
2 = agree or strongly agree that the definition
accurately captures the true meaning of
corporate reputation; 1 = neither agree nor
disagree; 0 = disagree or strongly disagree, as
the dependent variable. Covariates were
selected via a stepwise procedure whereby any
explanatory variable failing to attain
significance at the 0.05 level was deleted from
the regression. (Items 3.1(a) and 3.2(a), (d)
and (e) were highly intercorrelated (R = 0.81;
Cronbach's alpha = 0.9) and thus were
combined into a single scale labelled
``perception that the demand for reputation
management will rise sharply''.) A multinomial
logistic/regression model was employed
because it enables the calculation of the
probability that a particular response will fall
into any one of three or more categories.
Table II presents the results, which are based
on the use of the category ``neither agree nor
disagree'' as the ``reference category'' for the
 Practitioner perceptions of corporate reputation
Roger Bennett and Rita Kottasz
Table II Multinomial regression analysis
Agree/
strongly
agree
Independent variables Odds p Odds
(a) Perception that the demand for
reputation management will rise
sharply (i.e. the composite of 3.1(a)
and 3.2(a), (d) and (e)) 2.31 0.011
(b) Extent of reputation management
services provided 3.22 0.003
(c) Belief that reputation management
will require long-term changes in
how PR firms operate (3.2(l)) 2.19 0.004
(d) Belief that there is no difference
between reputation management
and general PR (3.2(o)) 0.98 0.05
(e) Belief that reputation management
is just ``old wine in new bottles''
(3.2(e)) 0.92 0.023
Notes: Model Chi-square (6 df) = 14.45, p < 0.025; Nagelkerke
R-square = 0.801
dependent variable. Thus, the ``Odds''
columns of Table II show the changes in the
probabilities of a respondent either agreeing or
disagreeing with the definition consequent to a
one-unit increase in each of the explanatory
variables, relative to the reference category.
(Odds values below unity indicate inverse
relationships, i.e. reductions in the odds.) It
can be seen that, for instance, a unit rise in the
perception that the demand for reputation
management will grow in the future (regressor
(a)) leads to a 2.31 times increase in the
probability that a respondent will agree or
strongly agree with the academic definition.
Table II reveals that the greatest positive
impact on the probability of agreement is
exerted by independent variable (b): the extent
of the reputation management services
provided by the consultancy. This variable was
formed by counting the number of items
ticked in questionnaire section 1.2. The belief
that reputation management will require long-
term changes on how PR firms operate
(variable (c)) was also a positive and significant
determinant of agreement. Conversely, people
who thought that reputation management was
``old wine in new bottles'' and that there is
really no difference between reputation
management and general PR were significantly
more inclined to disagree with the utility of the
academic definition.
Corporate Communications: An International Journal
Volume 5 . Number 4 . 2000 . 224±234
Conclusion
Disagree/
The results suggest that most PR practitioners
strongly
in the UK have taken on board the concept
disagree
and practice of reputation management as an
p
activity separate and distinct from general
public relations work. There was widespread
support for the propositions that clients will
increasingly demand additional reputation
0.96 0.027 management services and that in the future PR
consultants will provide a broader range of
0.91 0.011 reputation management facilities. On the other
hand, the responses indicated (see section 3.1)
a number of barriers to the adoption of
0.89 0.013 reputation management among companies.
Respondents overwhelmingly believed that
new ideas concerning reputation management
1.16 0.05 have come from PR practitioners rather than
academics. However, the definition of
corporate reputation derived from the
1.96 0.036 academic literature on the subject received
substantial support from practitioners in
consultancies actually engaged in reputation
management. Respondents who agreed with
the definition tended to be those whose firms
provided a large number of reputation
management services, who thought that client
demand for reputation management would
rise in the future, and who believed that
reputation management was new and different
from general PR and would require change in
PR firms' working practices.
Although the section 4 definition of
corporate reputation (with which practitioners
substantially agreed) was derived from the
academic literature in the reputation area, only
a meagre 7 per cent of the sample disagreed
with the statement that most new reputation
management ideas came from practitioners
rather than the academic domain. An
implication of the present study is therefore
that the academic community needs to
broadcast and emphasise the value of its
contributions in these regards more forcefully
than previously has been the case. Further
research is required into the precise
mechanisms whereby academic developments
relating to reputation management are
disseminated to PR executives ``in the field''.
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