Author: Andrew Griffin
ISBN No: 9780749469924
Review date: 16/12/2025
No of pages: 262
Publisher: Kogan Page
Publisher URL:
http://www.koganpage.com/editions/crisis-issues-and-reputation-management/9780749469924
Year of publication: 24/03/2014
Brief:
Crisis, Issues and Reputation Management
price
£24.99
Readers may wonder why they have to read a book on reputation management, or even spare a thought for the subject. Security people protect things, and managing reputation is ivory tour stuff for the head office guys who ought to get out more? At once the author Andrew Griffin stresses that managing the organisation’s reputation is about avoiding damage to the bottom line.
As he puts it, a reputation is far easier to destroy than to build. Something he is quick to air is whether it’s possible to manage something as quicksilver as a reputation: “Reputation may seem so all-encompassing – the collective view of everyone about everything – that an organisation cannot hope to manage it.” In a well laid-out, easy to follow, and practical book, with plenty of website links to follow if a topic is of particular interest to you, Griffin makes the case for trying to do something about reputation management. He names cyber-attack and maritime piracy as among the risks to reputation, and he says plenty about risk, and crisis management, both subjects for the security manager. By thinking in terms of risk, he sets out how you can manage a risk through its ‘life cycle’; and you ought to regard reputation risk as a process, something you keep seeking to predict, prevent, and if necessary respond to and resolve. And you shouldn’t forget to recover, and review how prepared you are. If only because you need to know your business is faced with a threat to your reputation – through what people are saying about it on social media for example – Griffin stresses the need for communication, and media management in a crisis. So while that’s something for ‘corporate affairs’ to handle, Security may well have to feed updates in. Whether a crisis arises because of bad practice, a failure in performance, or some security issue such as terrorism, Griffin suggests organisations will still have to defend their reputations, given ‘declining trust, intrusive media, burgeoning social media’.
Humans make errors, accidents will happen. In a brief final chapter looking to the future, the author warns against ‘crisis fatigue’, and argues that businesses have to work harder to manage their reputations, as crises blow up faster and social media users appear fickle and judgemental. Griffin makes an authoritative and readable case for reputation and crisis management, as something central to doing business and running an organisation.
Crisis, Issues and Reputation Management, by Andrew Griffin. Published 2014 by Kogan Page, paperback, 262 pages, £24.99. ISBN: 9780749469924. Visit www.koganpage.com.
