A Stakeholders’ Perspective of Reputation Dimensions for Service Organisations: Evidence from a Developing Country Context

Abstract

Corporate reputation is widely acknowledged to contribute to business success by academics and business executives. Despite the importance of corporate reputation in all markets, we lack sufficient research into what reputation might mean in the context of companies in developing countries. This paper addresses this lingering gap in the literature by investigating the dimensions that make service organisations reputable from the perspective of four primary stakeholder groups of two large service organisations. The paper also sought to determine whether the same reputation dimensions apply to service organisations in general, or whether they differ according to the type of service organisation. Empirical data were sourced using the mixed-method approach, and analysis revealed 16 items across 6 dimensions that constitute the reputation of service organisations. The study also found that there is not much difference between the reputation dimensions of two organisations used in this study. However, it reveals major differences between the dimensions derived from the developing country context, and those derived from developed contexts. This illustrates that context-specific reputation measures can emerge which are important in understanding how reputation is created and can be managed. Consequently, it underscores the need for more scientific researches into reputation dimensions in different contexts (countries and organisations).