Concerned about their reputation, more major companies globally are investing substantial resources to manage their reputation risk and have increased their efforts to do so, according to a new report from The Conference Board.

"Safeguarding reputation is even more critical today because companies have developed successful ways to make reputation risk management part of their overall risk management," said Ellen Hexter, director, enterprise risk management at The Conference Board, a global business research and membership organization.

Ms. Hexter, who co-authored the report with Sandy Bayer, president of Bayer Consulting, said, "In addition, different stakeholder groups are becoming more sophisticated in how they drive corporate reputations."

Additionally, in a statement, Ms. Hexter said, "Most importantly, consumers have high expectations that companies will not only produce quality products and services but also will act ethically in their creation and distribution."

The report, "Managing Reputation Risk and Reward," is based on the findings of The Conference Board Reputation Risk Research Working Group and a survey that includes 148 risk management executives of major corporations. Twenty-five percent of respondents were in the financial services industry.

The report defined reputation as the way a company is perceived by each of its stakeholder groups and reputation risk as the risk that an event will negatively influence stakeholder perceptions.

More than three-quarters of the survey respondents, 82 percent, said their companies are making a substantial effort to manage reputation risk. Eighty-one percent said they have increased focus in this area over the last three years.

When respondents were asked to rate the challenges their reputation risk programs face, 59 percent rated assessing the perceptions and concerns of stakeholders as an "extremely" or "very" significant issue, making it the highest ranked challenge.

Of those surveyed, however, only 49 percent of executives said the management of reputation risk was highly integrated with their enterprise risk management (ERM) function or another risk oversight program.

Managing reputation risk as a stand-alone program, the survey found, may leave a company without a comprehensive view of all the risks it faces.

It reported that in response to this danger, some companies have either placed their reputation risk management program within ERM or created a cross-functional structure that ensures close coordination.

While surveys of customers, employees and other stakeholders have been widely used for years, some companies are now bringing these disparate assessments together in an effort to gather comparable data on a consistent set of reputation attributes, according to the report.

To ensure that reputation is taken into account, Novo Nordisk, Capital One and other companies are giving their business units the primary responsibility for assessing and managing such risks, Conference Board said.

Other innovations in this area include employing formal reputation models--either developed internally or by specialist consulting firms--and using quantitative methods to identify the greatest reputation risks and opportunities.

Conference Board said 59 percent of those polled indicated that assessing the perceptions and concerns of stakeholders was an extremely or very significant issue--making it the highest-ranked challenge.

The report said media monitoring to protect reputation has become more sophisticated and tools exist to assess whether coverage is positive, neutral or negative and to assess the credibility of publications and the prominence of coverage.

Although consumers and investors are increasingly gathering information from blogs, online forums and social networking sites, only 34 percent of survey respondents said they extensively monitor such sites, and only 10 percent actively participated in them.

Conference Board's Research Working Group made the following recommendations for companies to safeguard reputations:

o Actively involve boards of directors in reputation risk management.

o Demonstrate to leaders and management teams in business units the impact of their actions on reputation.

o Integrate reputation risk management with ERM or other risk management programs.

o Quantify the value of reputation.

The authors said, "While crises are sometimes inevitable, a company's reputation when it is most vulnerable and how the organization responds can have an enduring impact on how it is perceived for years to come."

Of the companies surveyed, 48 percent were located in the United States, 41 percent in Western Europe, 8 percent in Asia and 3 percent in "Other."

The breakdown of the corporate role of those polled was: communications, 34 percent; enterprise risk management/risk management, 29 percent; legal, 10 percent, "other," 8 percent; finance, 7 percent; reputation management, 6 percent; C-suite/senior management, 4 percent; and middle management, 1 percent.

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