Does reputation matter any more?

Headlines frequently claim that some person or business has suffered damage to their reputation, but what exactly does this mean? Is it just lazy sensationalism or is there some underlying tangible value that has been reduced? Many people talk about reputation as a commodity in its own right yet few can adequately explain how damage works and why some damage is worse than other damage.

Let’s take a couple of recent examples from the world of sport: Bloodgate and Crashgate, Harlequins rugby club and the Renault formula one team. At Harlequins the coach, Dean Richards, was found to have sanctioned the use of false blood capsules to facilitate substitution by ‘blood replacements’, thus illegally strengthening the team during a match. At Renault the boss of their formula one racing team, Flavio Briatore allegedly instructed one of his drivers to crash in order for his team mate to win a race interrupted by the incident. In each case the sports press ran stories about reputation damage, but whose reputation and how much were never specified.

To answer this it is necessary to look into what we really mean by reputation, which is after all a relational concept – you have a reputation with someone for something. In sport a competitor has a reputation with a governing body based on fair play. The same competitor has a reputation with fans for entertainment. In a team sport the competitor often employs a manager to maximise competitive advantage a win more often than lose, his reputation with an employer is based on cost effectiveness, the price of winning matches or races. So there are at least three different types of reputation in play here: the coach, the team and the sport.

Firstly the sport itself: fans of rugby union and formula one have differing levels of expectation. Entertainment value is measured by audience size and TV rights so governing bodies tinker with rules to ensure that audiences don’t tire of the thrill of the match or the race. Among current & potential fans of rugby or motor racing will either ‘gate’ have caused them to lose interest and spend their entertainment pound elsewhere? It is highly unlikely. Only if you could prove that fans had departed and audience revenue reduced, could you measure reputation damage attributable directly to bloodgate or crashgate.

At team level there is more of a case for damage as reputation among peers, rival teams, will have changed. This will influence recruitment of new players/drivers, and will also enable competitors to leverage the goodwill they have gained to the detriment of the exposed ‘cheats’. Would this however impact the teams own fan base? Probably not, although this depends on the individual fan’s strength of attachment to the team and rationale for his/her support. The team will however enjoy much closer scrutiny from the governing body as a direct result of the incident and any reputation for ‘fair play’ has suffered. Whether the team retains the ‘cheat’ label in the long term will depend on subsequent behaviour and level of contrition exhibited.

At coach level there is no doubt the individuals have suffered damage to their personal reputation as each has been pilloried for trying to secure their team a competitive advantage. Both Dean Richards and Flavio Briatore are big enough names in their respective sports to recover, and there is already some sympathy with them from realists who appreciate that every scandal requires some heads to roll in order to achieve closure. The CVs of Richards and Briatore can probably place these incidents in proportion, although their immediate employability may be hindered, their successes probably outweigh any short term damage.

Reputation damage enjoys a direct correlation with loss of trust. Where trust is recoverable then damage is temporary, conversely where trust is irrecoverable damage is long lasting. The loser in both bloodgate and crashgate is of course the ethos of sport, not professionalism but commercialism, constant tinkering with rules to make sport more attractive as TV entertainment. The integrity of sport is the loser, for as Albert Camus said: ‘Integrity has no need of rules’.