Despite ample research showing the importance of corporate reputation in recruiting, knowledge about how companies work with employer branding is still limited. This first academic study in this topic is based on a comprehensive empirical data set systematized to a description of employer branding using a grounded theory approach. The description illustrates a process with three phases: brand input, brand support, and brand evaluation. Each phase is related to the messages enclosed in the brand. A comparative analysis of the empirical description and marketing literature shows that the underlying reasoning in branding at the labor market is quite similar to branding at the customer market. However, several important differences were also highlighted, indicating that employer branding is a multi-disciplinary phenomenon. The most surprising difference is a widespread homogeneity in the companies’ employer branding. This contrasts the emphasis on uniqueness in the marketing literature. A further analysis of this finding generated four homogenizing dimensions: time, industry, geography and corporate demographics. Each contains a number of corporate populations with companies similar in the dimension’s point of reference. Since the dimensions are not specific for the labor market a further analysis of the theoretical arguments for heterogeneity and homogeneity was motivated. This shows that there are economic as well as social arguments for both homo- and heterogeneity. From an economic perspective a heterogeneous employer branding creates a cost advantage, because with an attractive unique reputation a company can pay lower salaries than competitors for a given position. On the other hand a homogeneous branding generates cost advantages when the company benchmarks competitors or respects the institutional norms. From a social perspective a heterogeneous branding contributes to a distinct corporate identity, while a homogenous branding avoids social isolation. Consequently, homogeneity provides advantages that heterogeneity does not and vice versa. Companies therefore level the arguments. The balance is more likely to lean towards homogeneity when 1) the companies belongs to the same corporate population in one or many of the homogenizing dimensions and 2) a branding component relatively easily can be benchmarked or is connected with explicit and strong institutional norms. The balancing act signifies that a homogeneous branding is not a product of institutional determinism, but that the corporate populations give rise to different social identities and that the companies according to a logic of appropriateness act in a way that is rational given their specific situation and context. Thus, this logic creates coherent cohorts.

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Increased international competitiveness to host sport mega-events indicates their perceived value in stimulating regional and national economic, social and cultural development. In the context of broader governmental public opinion management strategies, sport mega-events hold the potential to mobilize soft power resources of the host country, expressed in values, culture and policies, and engage with and influence the publics of other countries. This thesis investigates the significance of sport mega-events for the host country’s public diplomacy strategies and practice by exploring the concepts of public diplomacy, sport mega-events, soft power and national image within a multi-disciplinary conceptual framework. The analysis of scholarly literature, official and media reports reveals how aspects of reputation, credibility, and legitimacy guide both foreign public opinion and the practice of public diplomacy in conjunction with sport mega-events. Moreover, international reputation of the host nation, including status, prestige and image, appeared to benefit the most as a result of strategic application of sport mega-events to public diplomacy. This can be achieved by proving functional reputation though demonstration of financial and organizational success. Alternatively, social reputation of the host is at risk of sustaining considerable damage as a result of resistance from social activists groups, thus requiring extensive damage control efforts of the host country's image. The conclusions drawn from this study raise significant questions about the potential of sport mega-events being effectively used for public diplomacy and the experience of the host governments, revealing functional competence as having the greatest potential to influence public diplomacy strategy built around hosting sport mega-events.

Företag publicerar allt mer information om deras sociala miljömässiga och ekonomiska ansvar.Denna information presenterar de i sina årsredovisningar under avsnittet Corporate Social Responsibility. Idenna studie undersökt har vi undersökt hur rapporteringen i en bransch påverkas efter en incident och omdet finns spridningseffekter och imitationsbeteende när det gäller CSR-rapporteringen. Som utgångspunkthar vi valt incidenten i Mexikanska golfen den 20 april 2010. Då skedde ett stort oljeutsläpp i sambandmed att oljeföretaget British Petroleum's plattform Deepwater Horizon exploderade. Oljeutsläppet varomfattande och hade stor effekt på BP's rykte hos allmänheten. För legitimisera sin verksamhet igen har devalt att utöka sin CSR-rapportering med mer information om deras sociala ansvar. Genom att ha undersökt34 andra oljebolag runt om i världen har vi sett ett liknande mönster, att flertalet av dessa bolag har ökatsin CSR-rapportering i efterföljd av incidenten. Detta är i enlighet med flertalet teorier som påvisar attföretag härmar varandra i beteende och söker legitimitet från allmänheten. I vår studie har det också visatsig att storleken på företaget har betydelse för hur mycket CSR-rapporteringen ökar, vilket förklaras av attde större företagen har mer exponering än de mindre vilket leder till att de söker mer legitimitet.

Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka hur två reseföretag i förtroendekris bemöter kritik via Twitter samt vilka strategier inom den image reparerande diskursen de använder sig av. Studien ämnar även ta fasta på om det finns ett mönster bakom bemötandet. För att uppfylla uppsatsens syfte har två frågeställningar formulerats: · Hur bemöter SJ och SAS kritik på Twitter? · Verkar företagen vara medvetna om valda strategiers möjliga effekter? För att genomföra denna undersökning utfördes först en förundersökning där antalet dialoger mellan företagen och dess kunder sammanställdes samt dialogernas längd och antalet aktörer räknades. Till huvudundersökningen studeras 20 dialoger innehållande kritik som låg närmast i tiden. För att studera dessa använde vi oss av en kvalitativ textanalys. De viktigaste resultaten visar att båda reseföretagen tillämpar liknande strategier i situationer där de kritiseras för händelser av liknande karaktär. De mest använda strategierna var för både SJ en SAS av ignorerande eller förnekande karaktär, två strategier som i denna studie har kategoriserats som avståndstagande strategier. Den huvudsakliga slutsatsen i uppsatsen är att den valda strategin inte påverkar ett företags rykte så mycket som sättet själva strategin tillämpas på. / Aim: The purpose of this paper is to examine how two travel companies in different kinds of crises respond to criticism through social media, more specifically on Twitter. The paper also aims to identify whether crises of various kinds in the travel industry are met by specific image repair strategies. If possible one aim is also to take note if there is a certain relationship between chosen strategy and the impact on the examined companies reputation. Material and Method: The first part of the research consists of a preliminary investigations where the two companies tweets is counted and measured in order to get an overall picture of their activity on Twitter. This part of the research was based on one week ́s activity per company and the tweets were recalculated to get average numbers. The qualitative part represents the key study of this research and the material consisted of the 20 latest dialogues where customers expressed criticism and complaints directed to the companies SJ and SAS. Main Results: The main results of this research found that the two companies applied similar strategies in situations when accused for incidents of resembling nature. The most used strategies was for both SJ an SAS of ignoring or denial character, two strategies that in this research was categorized as renunciative strategies. The main conclusion this essay found is that the chosen strategy does not impact a company’s reputation as much as the application of the strategy.

Although studies in scholarly journals suggest that corporate philanthropic activities may enhance corporate reputation, little systematic research on this effect exists. In fact, our knowledge of consumer responses to corporate philanthropic initiatives is limited. While corporate success relies on the support of customers, business benefits from corporate generosity - such as improved corporate reputation - are lacking. This dissertation investigates consumer perceptions of corporate philanthropy. Specifically, it explores the congruence among consumer perceptions of different philanthropic cause types, their geographical deployment, and the company-cause fit. Moreover, it aims to provide an understanding of the link between corporate philanthropy and corporate reputation by highlighting the role of ethnocentrism in shaping this relationship. The empirical research draws on balance theory, the sociological concept of ethnocentrism, and cultural dimensions to provide a framework and model for the relationship between consumer Attitudes toward Corporate Philanthropy and Customer-based Corporate Reputation. I employ three methodological approaches (interpretive, experimental, and survey-based) to investigate three sets of research questions. Firstly, an exploratory design is employed to uncover consumer and corporate perceptions of corporate philanthropy. Secondly, an experimental design is used to shed light on consumer evaluations of different corporate philanthropic causes and their dimensions by testing three propositions. Finally, a survey design is applied to test six hypotheses, and consequently to provide an understanding of the link between corporate philanthropy and corporate reputation in two distinct cultural contexts. The latter consists of two large-scale surveys in which two leading telecommunication companies, one in Austria and one in Egypt, are examined. Data is analyzed by applying qualitative computing, nonparametric tests, regression analyses, and structural equation modeling. Three consumer views emerge from the interviews: egoistic, altruistic, and pragmatic. The corporate view, in contrast, is largely of strategic nature (i.e. gaining sustainable competitive advantage by means of responsible management). Some weak ethnocentric tendencies appear in terms of consumer preferences for domestic philanthropic support as opposed to distant support. Furthermore, findings point toward congruence in the perceived importance of social causes by consumers, with health-related causes favored most and art-related causes least. The geographical focus of corporate philanthropy (i.e. domestic versus distant) is perceived differently for the education-related cause across all seven industries examined in the experiment. For other causes, however, such as health- or environment-related causes, a significant difference is found in the oil and consulting industries, respectively. This indicates that consumers' evaluation of corporate philanthropic activities is partially dependent on the geographical focus. Additionally, results confirm the existence of weak industry-specific preferences. The support of causes with a close fit to the core business is favored by consumers unless another cause type (less industry-related) is perceived as more worthy of support. In terms of corporate reputation, corporate philanthropy has a small to medium impact on perceptions of the corporation in Egypt and Austria, respectively, varying by respondent subgroup. Consumer Ethnocentrism impacts upon Attitude toward Corporate Philanthropy negatively in Egypt, while in Austria, the absence of Consumer Ethnocentrism moderates the relationship between Attitude toward Corporate Philanthropy and Customer-based Corporate Reputation positively and more strongly than moderate Consumer Ethnocentrism. The research presented in this dissertation advances the extant literature in three important ways. First, it focuses on a relatively neglected area of corporate social responsibility, namely corporate philanthropy - an unconditional contribution by a corporation to a social cause. Second, it embraces corporate reputation as a multidimensional construct (as opposed to a unidimensional construct) and thus contributes to the relatively few studies within reputation measurement that exclusively address the consumer stakeholder group (e.g. Walsh et al. 2009). Furthermore, to best of my knowledge, no scholarly research has examined the relationship between corporate philanthropy and Customer-based Corporate Reputation to date. Third, by examining real customers and real-life companies, this work aims to overcome the limitations of the laboratory settings that have traditionally been preferred in this area of research. For managers, the findings offer valuable consumer insights into corporate philanthropy and indicate strategies to improve business outcomes from philanthropic activities. Suggestions for how corporate philanthropic activities should best be communicated through various channels are provided. In this context, the role of word-of-mouth and social media in disseminating philanthropic information is discussed. (author's abstract)

Purpose: The study aims to analyze how companies can learn from past communications in critical situations and during corporate crisis, and see how they use this knowledge in the management of subsequent critical situations and corporate crisis. Furthermore, the media is analyzed to see how the newspaper industry chooses to reflect an organization and its actions, and also to see if the pressure through articles in the newspapers has an impact on the extent of the situation. Method: A qualitative case study of Sweden’s largest food company, ICA Sverige AB, where knowledgeable people in media management within the company are interviewed using semi-structured interviews, with support of quantitative methods by a collection of articles from the news press. Theories: Concepts, theories and models in crisis management and communication has been applied to relevant data. These comprise Knowledge Management, a communication template in crisis management, The Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) and the model Content of crisis communication. Empiric: Based on the quantitative data consisting of articles from four Swedish news sources: Svenska Dagbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Aftonbladet and Expressen, a semi-structured interview guide was created and carried out with the person within ICA who possesses knowledge of the subject area. Conclusion: ICA has during the priod studied exhibited to have used the concept of Knowledge Management in the development of their routines regarding product recalls at product defects. The relationships between ICA and the media have shown improvements, which has resulted in ICA percieve the media coverage as balanced, true and fair.

In electronic marketplaces, buying and selling agents may be used to represent buyers and sellers respectively. When these marketplaces are large, repeated transactions between traders may be rare. This makes it difficult for buying agents to judge the reliability of selling agents, discouraging participation in the market. A variety of trust and reputation systems have been proposed to help traders to find trustworthy partners. Unfortunately, as our investigations reveal, there are a number of common vulnerabilities present in such models---security problems that may be exploited by `attackers' to cheat without detection/repercussions. Inspired by these findings, we set out to develop a model of trust with more robust security properties than existing proposals. Our Trunits model represents a fundamental re-conception of the notion of trust. Instead of viewing trust as a measure of predictability, Trunits considers trust to be a quality that one possesses. Trust is represented using abstract trust units, or `trunits', in much the same way that money represents quantities of value. Trunits flow in the course of transactions (again, similar to money); a trader's trunit balance determines if he is trustworthy for a given transaction. Faithful execution of a transaction results in a larger trunit balance, permitting the trader to engage in more transactions in the future---a built-in economic incentive for honesty. We present two mechanisms (sets of rules that govern the operation of the marketplace) based on this model: Basic Trunits, and an extension known as Commodity Trunits, in which trunits may be bought and sold. Seeking to precisely characterize the protection provided to market participants by our models, we develop a framework for security analysis of trust and reputation systems. Inspired by work in cryptography, our framework allows security guarantees to be developed for trust/reputation models--provable claims of the degree of protection provided, and the conditions under which such protection holds. We focus in particular on characterizing buyer security: the properties that must hold for buyers to feel secure from cheating sellers. Beyond developing security guarantees, this framework is an important research tool, helping to highlight limitations and deficiencies in models so that they may be targeted for future investigation. Application of this framework to Basic Trunits and Commodity Trunits reveals that both are able to deliver provable security to buyers.

Sociala medier innebär både stora hot och möjligheter. Möjligheterna är större än någonsin för organisationer att integrera med sina intressenter och utifrån det bygga starka relationer. Samtidigt innebär den snabba spridning av information som kanalerna innebär ett hot för organisationer. Att rykten eller kritik uppstår och växer sig starka i sociala medier är en stor fara och utmaning för organisationer världen över. Ryktesspridning och konflikter kan motverkas genom att organisationen kommunicerar öppet och trovärdigt. I studien studeras hur företag arbetar med frågor, kritik och feedback genom dialog i sociala medier. Syftet med studien är att beskriva hur utvalda svenska företag arbetar med frågor, kritik och feedback genom dialog i sociala medier för att stärka sina kundrelationer. Studien besvarar följande frågeställningar: • Hur beskriver de utvalda företagen sitt arbete med frågor, kritik och feedback genom dialog i sociala medier? • Hur ser innehållet ut i företagens arbete med frågor, kritik och feedback genom dialog i sociala medier? Frågeställningarna besvarades med hjälp av en kvalitativ metod. Studien inleddes med att vi genomförda kvalitativa samtalsintervjuer med representanter för de utvalda svenska företagen Com Hem, TeliaSonera, Trygg-Hansa och Ving. I intervjuerna fick respondenterna möjlighet att beskriva företagets arbete med frågor, kritik och feedback. Därefter studerades innehållet i företagens kommunikation i sociala medier genom att vi genomförde kvalitativa innehållsanalyser i Twitter, Facebook och bloggosfären. Studiens resultat visar att sociala medier har blivit en etablerad kanal för företagens arbete med frågor, kritik och feedback. Företagen arbetar kontinuerligt med att besvara frågor, kritik och feedback, vilket ligger i linje med hur konflikter och osäkerhet hos intressenter bör hanteras. Det förekommer både likheter och skillnader mellan företagens arbete. Genomgående är arbetet inte är ett utryck av spontana infall utan grundar sig i en strategi. Företagen anpassar sig till omständigheterna i sociala medier och använder sig av personliga budskap. Överlag visar företagen på en förståelse för sociala mediers förutsättningar och utnyttjar möjligheterna till dialog. Hur aktiva företagen är i arbetet med frågor, kritik och feedback skiljer sig till viss del dem emellan. Det finns även skillnader i hur arbetet ser ut mellan de olika sociala medierna. Tonen i dialogen som företagen deltar i på Facebook och Twitter är mestadels positiv. I bloggosfären är företagens arbete framförallt inriktat på att kommunicera med missnöjda kunder. Ett problem med arbetet i sociala medier är att det är svårt att utvärdera om det faktiskt påverkar relationen företag och kunder.

In electronic marketplaces, buying and selling agents may be used to represent buyers and sellers respectively. When these marketplaces are large, repeated transactions between traders may be rare. This makes it difficult for buying agents to judge the reliability of selling agents, discouraging participation in the market. A variety of trust and reputation systems have been proposed to help traders to find trustworthy partners. Unfortunately, as our investigations reveal, there are a number of common vulnerabilities present in such models---security problems that may be exploited by `attackers' to cheat without detection/repercussions. Inspired by these findings, we set out to develop a model of trust with more robust security properties than existing proposals. Our Trunits model represents a fundamental re-conception of the notion of trust. Instead of viewing trust as a measure of predictability, Trunits considers trust to be a quality that one possesses. Trust is represented using abstract trust units, or `trunits', in much the same way that money represents quantities of value. Trunits flow in the course of transactions (again, similar to money); a trader's trunit balance determines if he is trustworthy for a given transaction. Faithful execution of a transaction results in a larger trunit balance, permitting the trader to engage in more transactions in the future---a built-in economic incentive for honesty. We present two mechanisms (sets of rules that govern the operation of the marketplace) based on this model: Basic Trunits, and an extension known as Commodity Trunits, in which trunits may be bought and sold. Seeking to precisely characterize the protection provided to market participants by our models, we develop a framework for security analysis of trust and reputation systems. Inspired by work in cryptography, our framework allows security guarantees to be developed for trust/reputation models--provable claims of the degree of protection provided, and the conditions under which such protection holds. We focus in particular on characterizing buyer security: the properties that must hold for buyers to feel secure from cheating sellers. Beyond developing security guarantees, this framework is an important research tool, helping to highlight limitations and deficiencies in models so that they may be targeted for future investigation. Application of this framework to Basic Trunits and Commodity Trunits reveals that both are able to deliver provable security to buyers.