Who Speaks for the Regulator? The Role of Agency Heads in Strategic Reputation Management.

The literature on regulator reputation has predominantly treated regulatory agencies as unitary actors (Binderkrantz e.a., 2023; Bustos, 2021). Yet, recent studies demonstrate that the words and actions of individual employees play a central role in shaping agency reputation (Fahy, Klijn & van Erp, 2025; Pedersen & Salomonsen, 2023). Agency heads are theorized to exert a particularly strong influence on the reputation of the agency. As organizational figureheads, they are assumed to be key representatives whose behaviour and public communication contribute substantially to how agencies are perceived by external audiences (Baekkeskov, 2017; Carpenter, 2010; Maor, 2016, 2022; Pedersen & Salomonsen, 2023). Reflecting this, strategic reputation management has been conceptualized as a distinct type of “management behaviour performed with the intent to affect how external audiences perceive the organization” (Pedersen & Salomonsen, 2023, p. 41). Although the existing literature on strategic reputation management has provided us with valuable insights (Gliad, Maor & Bloom, 2015; Rimkuté, 2020), empirical research on the role of agency heads in this type of agency behaviour remains largely absent. Existing studies have examined how employees influence an organization’s reputation (Fahy e.a., 2025; Pedersen & Salomonsen, 2023; Pedersen, Verhoest & Salomonsen, 2024). Moreover, related literatures on public sector leadership (Boin & Christensen, 2008; van Dorp, 2022) and on the personalization of public officeholders (Aronson e.a., 2023) suggest that agency leaders can have a disproportionate impact on organizational legitimacy. Yet, we still know little about how agency heads use the autonomy and discretion associated with their position, as well as their personal attributes, to manage their organizations’ reputations as they navigate political and institutional constraints (cf. Bjørnå, 2016; Pedersen & Salomonsen, 2023). To address this gap, this paper asks: how do agency heads of regulatory agencies engage in and shape organizational reputation management? To answer this question, we conduct an exploratory interview study with agency heads of Dutch regulatory agencies. More specifically, we examine themes such as how agency heads understand and enact their role in organizational reputation management; how agency heads’ personal attributes (e.g., career background, professional identity, and leadership style) shape reputation management; and how agency heads navigate tensions between cultivating the agency’s reputation and remaining responsive to political principals (cf. Bertelli & Busuioc, 2021). Methodologically, the study relies on semi-structured interviews using the critical incident technique, which prompts respondents to recount and reflect on concrete instances in which reputational considerations played a significant role in their actions or decisions (Bott & Tourish, 2016). By anchoring the interviews in specific, real-world incidents, this approach facilitates detailed insight into agency heads’ strategic behaviour while reducing the risk of abstract or socially desirable responses. Panel 6 - regulatory decision making.