When Audience Members Assume a Leading Role: Introducting Reputation Advocacy

The emerging field of reputation management research investigates public organizations’ attempts to cultivate their reputation. This paper demonstrates that organizations are not always alone in this struggle: They may be joined by external actors pursuing the same goal. By conducting a qualitative media content analysis and semi-structured interviews on the case of the Swiss Child and Adult Protection Agencies (CAPA), I examine an illustrative instance of this phenomenon and investigate its underlying motivations. I refer to the act of cultivating an organization’s reputation from the outside as “reputation advocacy”. The dis-covery of reputation advocacy leads to a reconsideration of the established dichotomy in reputational research between active organization and passive audiences. Further, for a suc-cessful strategy of reputation management, public organizations should include the analysis of reputation advocacy into their strategy when cultivating their reputation.