THEORETICAL FRAME OF THE CORPORATE REPUTATION

Recent research into elements that influence the success of a company shows a growing interest in intangible values. One of these values is reputation, being particularly difficult to imitate and therefore a valuable source of competitive advantages. With time, favourable perceptions crystallize out into intangible assets of the corporate reputation that gives company important and specific position in the stakeholders’ consciousness. The corporate
reputation is built up on its basic values. To the key stakeholders, these values are: reliability, credibility, trustworthiness, and responsibility. Recently, companies have built up and safeguarded their reputation by developing practice that integrates economic and social conditions into their competitive strategy. This practice has to match the unique basic corporate values and its culture. Respecting the principles mentioned the company builds up and safeguards
an enviable reputation, defining at the same time the corporate brand, which represents the basics for creating and accepting the business concept as a symbol. Such business concept, or the symbol, describes the company itself as well as its qualities, identifying in that way the company on the market. In order to manage it, the corporate reputation has to be measured. Since this construct is multidimensional, and, in other words, the perception of the various stakeholders has to be determined, the measuring of reputation
has developed from the initial empirical estimate by the Fortune magazine to the recent Reputation Quotient and the Company personality scale, which have been accepted as reliable, valid and powerful measuring instruments of the corporate reputation. The corporate reputation has a strategic value, i.e. it is an asset. Reputation management is a discipline based on the principle that
high reputation is a result of expressing and conveying, i.e. communicating the authentic, original, and distinctive company values and personality.