Reputation Rules: Strategies for Building Your Company s Most Valuable Asset

Leverage your company’s most important asset!

“Diermeier draws on extensive research and illustrates these insights with rich case studies from a variety of industries. He shows how to integrate reputation management deeply into the culture and structure of companies. I expect Reputation Rules to set the standard for years to come.”
—Philip Kotler, S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

“Reputation Rules [provides a] ‘sixth sense’ for both reputational risks and opportunities. I highly recommend the book.”
—Samuel Allen, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Deere & Company

“Diermeier provides important insights for managing reputation and turning challenges into opportunities. The lessons will become an essential component of a manager’s repertoire.”
—David Baron, David S. and Ann M. Barlow Professor of Political Economy and Strategy, Emeritus, Stanford Graduate School of Business

“Reputation Rules breaks new ground in what has until now been an elusive challenge for companies and consultants alike. An exquisite compendium of navigational tools. . . . This is a game-changing book to be sure.”
—Harlan A. Loeb, Executive Vice President, Director of U.S. Crisis and Issues Management, Edelman

“Daniel Diermeier has continuously caught the attention of the business world with insightful and compelling facts that should once again challenge our thinking and actions. In today’s fast-changing business environment, values and reputation are the foundation, and Daniel presents sound reasoning and experience as to why they are so important.”
—Jeff Stratton, Executive Vice President and Chief Restaurant Officer, McDonald’s Corporation

"Any examination of how much-loved companies can forfeit people’s affections needs to start with the realisation of how few much-loved companies there are. Businesses are more often the villains, as Daniel Diermeier of Northwestern University’s Kellogg management school points out in his insightful new book Reputation Rules."
—Michael Skapinker, Financial Times

About the Book:

In our lightning-fast digital age, a company can face humiliation and possibly even ruin within seconds of a negative tweet or blog post. Over the last year companies such as BP, Goldman Sachs, and Toyota have experienced serious blows to their images that could have had reduced impact if their leaders had implemented reputation management into their business strategy and culture.

There is no one in either the corporate or academic sphere with greater expertise in the area of corporate reputation than Dr. Daniel Diermeier. An award-winning professor at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Dr. Diermeier has blazed a path in understanding the significance of reputation management and demonstrating how a company can create a program so powerful that it can help turn a potential public disgrace into a public image success story.

Reputation Rules is a landmark work bringing to light Dr. Diermeier’s groundbreaking insights in this critical area. He offers the frameworks, strategies, and processes for changing your company’s focus as quickly as the world is changing around you. He touches on all of the reputational issues that need to be managed from a strategic level, describing how to:

• Overcome direct challenges from influential activist and political forces
• Manage corporate scandals, including executive compensation
• Use external, seemingly unrelated events to boost reputation
• Build a reputation management process into everyday operations

In addition, Dr. Diermeier provides case studies of Shell’s confrontation with Greenpeace, Mercedes’s recovery from the Moose crisis, AIG’s executive bonus fallout, Wal-Mart’s reputation-building response to Hurricane Katrina, and numerous other scenarios illustrating what works and what doesn’t when it comes to reputation management.

Brimming with keen insights and lucid examples, Reputation Rules is a guidepost for your organization’s future—and a salve for crisis management.

Daniel Diermeier , Ph.D., is the IBM Professor of Regulation and Competitive Practice and director of the Ford Motor Company Center for Global Citizenship at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. He has served as an advisor to leading companies, including Accenture, Cargill, Johnson & Johnson, Kraft, McDonald’s, and Shell. He is also a senior advisor to the FBI. In 2007, Dr. Diermeier won the Faculty Pioneer Award from the Aspen Institute, named the “Oscar of Business Schools” by the Financial Times.