Decomposing organisational reputation: The effects of organisation-public relationship outcomes on cognitive representations of organisations and evaluations of organisational performance

The purpose of this study is to decompose common reputation measurement systems into behavioural organisation-public relationship outcomes, cognitive representations of an organisation in the minds of publics and evaluations of organisational performance. In the proposed model, propensity for active communication behaviour and familiarity are suggested as correlated precursors of organisation-public relationship outcomes eg trust, satisfaction, commitment and control mutuality) and organisation-public relationship outcomes are hypothesised to have a direct effect on evaluations of organisational performance as well as an indirect effect via the mediation of cognitive representations of the organisation. The authors investigated different types of five Korean-based organisations two domestic corporations in different industries, a multinational corporation, a sports association and a non-profit organisation) to validate the model across different types of organisations. The findings of this study suggest that relationship outcomes lead to favourable representations of an organisation and positive evaluations of performance of the organisation.