Shipment Inspection And Arrangement

Shipment Inspection And Arrangement

Executives know the importance of their companies’ reputations. Firms with strong positive reputations attract better people. They are perceived as providing more value, which often allows them to charge a premium. Their customers are more loyal and buy broader ranges of products and services. Because the market believes that such companies will deliver sustained earnings and future growth, they have higher price-earnings multiples and market values and lower costs of capital. Moreover, in an economy where 70% to 80% of market value comes from hard-to-assess intangible assets such as brand equity, intellectual capital, and goodwill, organizations are especially vulnerable to anything that damages their reputations.

Most companies, however, do an inadequate job of managing their reputations in general and the risks to their reputations in particular. They tend to focus their energies on handling the threats to their reputations that have already surfaced. This is not risk management; it is crisis management—a reactive approach whose purpose is to limit the damage. This article provides a framework for proactively managing reputational risks. It explains the factors that affect the level of such risks and then explores how a company can sufficiently quantify and control them. Such a process will help managers do a better job of assessing existing and potential threats to their companies’ reputations and deciding whether to accept a given risk or to take actions to avoid or mitigate it.