The reputation of universities

 
Mr. Rector, authorities, professors, students, members of the academic community, friends.

First of all, I would like to thank the University of Piura for inviting me to participate in this opening ceremony, which recalls the past months and looks forward to the future. Sharing this solemn and family-oriented moment is an honor and a joy for me.

Until now I had not had the chance to visit the University or Peru, so I will always be indebted to you. Thank you very much for the hospitality, which made me feel at home from the first moment.

I was also particularly excited to come here at this time, to show the affection and closeness of the University of Navarra. From there, as from many places around the world, we have followed with apprehension the news about the effects of El Niño. Evangelina has become a global icon of the person who suffers and rises with courage to start over. Without a doubt, the “We are all Piura” campaign has become an important milestone in the life of the university in these months.

It is my turn to speak about “the reputation of universities”. When discussing this subject, I always remember an episode that apparently took place at Cambridge University, legendary for its history and its campus, where important scientific advances have been made and where they boast of having invented nothing less than football. A visitor to that University, amazed by the surroundings, a mixture of nature and tradition, an ideal environment for peaceful study, asked someone who worked there:

-How did you achieve this wonderful campus?

- Very simple, replied his interlocutor. There is no secret. It is within everyone's reach: you just have to water it every day for 700 years.

I don't know if the anecdote is reality or legend, but it serves as a starting point for these words. With the British campus in mind, I will try to show that reputation also requires patient and prolonged cultivation.

I will divide my presentation into four parts, which correspond to four questions. We will consider what reputation consists of, how it is formed, how it is managed and, finally, what communication contributes to cultivating reputation.

 

1. What is reputation?

The classics have spoken about reputation since ancient times. It is a commonly used word that describes a person's good reputation, the respect they deserve, the prestige they have earned through their behavior.

In the last two decades, reputation has also been used in the fields of communication, economics and business. In this sense, the word is used to refer to the “intangible value” of an institution. We know that today the good name of a company, its intangible asset, is worth more, sometimes much more, than its tangible assets, its buildings or its treasury.

If you allow me, I would dare to propose a synthetic definition of reputation as a “sum of intangibles”: that is, a set of positive values – such as, for example, honesty, innovation, leadership – that are attributed to an organization; that are peacefully shared by broad sectors of society; and that arise from the perceptions, also positive, that people and stakeholders have of that organization. stakeholders that are related to it.

The stakeholders They are homogeneous groups of people linked to the organization by a particular bond. In the case of a university, the main groups are the teachers, the employees, the students, the graduates, the other universities, the regulatory bodies, the community in which it operates.

The university maintains a relationship with each of these groups of people, who come to have certain perceptions as a result of these relationships. If the relationships are satisfactory, the perceptions will be favorable. And vice versa.

It is worth remembering that perceptions are subjective, but they have practical consequences, because purchasing decisions, voting decisions, and life decisions depend on them. In our case, based on perceptions, we choose a university to study or work at, or we decide to support certain projects.

The important thing for the formation of reputation is the “summation”. That is, all the stakeholders have positive perceptions, in all aspects of the organization's activity, to the extent possible, of course; and, in the case of a university, both in teaching, research and transfer, which are the missions of higher education centers.

There is a wide range of possible perceptions, ranging from mere knowledge to enthusiastic recommendation. These impressions are the result of the information available (objective data) and the experience that one has (subjective sensations). For this reason, it is often said that perceptions integrate reasons and emotions.

Consequently, we could say that the reputation of a university is equivalent to the “perceived quality”, which is based on the “objective”, real quality of its activities.

This is largely the logic behind international university rankings. They collect objective, public data (for example, on scientific productivity and publications); and they also include subjective data, opinions from surveys (responded to by academics, employers or other groups).

Although they are always partial and have relative value, rankings serve a social function, because they organize information that is widely dispersed. And, at the same time, they provide information about the universities with the best reputation, and they themselves become sources of reputation. It is a circular process.

In any case, beyond the rankings, each university must determine its own roadmap in the search for quality, and its own way of analyzing the perceptions of that quality by the different stakeholders.

From this synthesis – reputation as a sum of intangibles, the result of the perceptions of the different stakeholders–, we can ask the following question.

 

2. How is reputation formed?

It is not difficult to understand how reputation is lost. By now, we have witnessed many crises that have affected people, organizations, financial institutions, political parties.

In fact, the importance given to reputation, both in the business world and in the communications world, is due to the severity and frequency of reputational crises rather than to discoveries in the respective sciences.

We have just seen the case of United Airlines, which lost hundreds of millions in the stock market for rudely expelling a passenger. The Volkswagen crisis in the United States is still recent. And, the most experienced will remember a scandal of great relevance, associated with the name of Enron, which caused the collapse of the auditing firm Arthur Andersen, which until then was very well known in its sector.

These reputational crises are different from problems caused by accidents or economic reasons. They are crises caused by incorrect behaviour, which becomes public knowledge, damages the reputation of institutions and makes them lose their credibility, legitimacy and reputation. Some companies have even disappeared as a result of this loss, because reputation is essential for the prosperity of organisations and even for their survival. The digital environment has also accelerated the time of reputational crises, which are now lightning-fast.

 

But we are not interested here in analyzing how reputation is lost, but rather how it is achieved. We sense that these are “asymmetric” processes; that is, it can be said that reputation takes a lifetime to accumulate, and can fade in a short time.

By the way: we use the verbs “to acquire”, “to achieve”, “to treasure” here to talk about reputation. And this sum of positive intangibles is configured “out there”, in the collective imagination. It does not belong to us, it is attributed to us, it can only be “deserved”, just like trust.

To explain the reputation formation process, I will use a model that responds to an “anthropological paradigm”: it attempts to understand the reputation of organizations using the reputation of people as a reference.

The process has three areas: the first is the organization itself, the next is the area of the stakeholders, and the last one is public opinion. For each of the areas I will mention three key words.

1. In the organization:
2. The first element of the reputation formation process, its root, is the identity of the organization (its being: ideology, history, principles, vision and mission); that is the starting point, the principle of reputation;
3. Identity is then necessarily expressed in the culture (its doing: policies, practices, values); culture is the embodiment of corporate identity;
4. Identity and culture are manifested in the speech (his saying: words, texts, explanations, statements); being, doing and saying must be coherent.
5. In the relationship with the stakeholders:
6. The organization maintains relations with different groups of people: to provide a service, pay a salary, collaborate on a project; the organization has a relational dimension; it can even be said that an organization is a set of relationships;
7. Organizations engage conversations with different audiences, through different channels. In addition to offering products and services, they create a discourse, offer information and meaning, and make themselves known; organizations also have a dialogic dimension;
8. As a result of these relationships and conversations, people are formed. perceptions, depending also on whether their expectations are met or disappointed;
9. Finally, in public opinion:
10. From the most widespread perceptions, the public, the audiences, form a image about the organization; that is, the public knows, recognizes, identifies, and distinguishes one organization from others;
11. When the image is positive, it covers all aspects of the activity and refers to all the stakeholders, becomes reputation; that is, public opinion appreciates, values, esteems, recommends the organization;
12. And, if an organization's reputation is maintained over time and stands out from others, it becomes authority; this happens when the public respects, seeks advice, and listens carefully to the opinions of an organization in a certain sector; it happens like in the field of science: there is always a researcher, a scientist who has a recognized authority in the subject.

We have said that reputation is perceived quality, which is formed from objective quality. Now, we can see the same reality from another point of view: the process of reputation formation begins in the identity and culture of the organization. It has deep roots. A good and solid reputation is not earned through cosmetic operations. For organizations, a good reputation requires a genuine commitment to coherence. And it requires careful monitoring of the entire process we have described, so that this coherence is not lost in any of the phases. Knowing one's own identity, promoting internal culture, identifying the people who are responsible for it, and so on. stakeholders, building relationships and having conversations with them. All of this is part of cultivating a university's reputation.

With this reputation building model we can move on to the next question.

 

3. How is reputation managed?

At this point, an old Latin aphorism comes to mind, which apparently has little to do with our topic: “bonum ex integra causa, malum est quocumque defectu"Good results from the convergence of multiple causes; evil arises when a single factor fails.

Although this medieval saying comes from other fields, it has come to be applied to the world of cinema: for a film to be excellent, the actors, the script, the music, the photography, everything, have to be good. For it to fail, all it takes is for just one of these elements to fail.

Something similar can be said about reputation. This sum of intangibles requires the concurrence of multiple causes. Reputation is based on what an organization is, does and says. It is enough for one important element to fail for reputation to decline.

These ideas can be expressed in another way: reputation is not a product, but a fruit. It cannot be manufactured or built. Rather, it is prepared, cultivated, protected. Just as it is not possible to force the time of the fruits, it is not possible to force the time of reputation, which presupposes work well done, over a long period of time. Therefore, the increase in reputation has more to do with cultivation than with production.

If we accept this dynamic, we understand that to improve reputation we must improve reality, we must work on the levels of identity, culture and relationships, not on image.

This reflection has practical consequences. The first is that cultivating reputation is the responsibility of everyone who is part of the organization. All employees can sow, contribute something: help create a culture that is then reflected in the image.

The professionals who form part of the organisation must understand themselves as protagonists and ambassadors of the organisation's reputation. The teachers, the employees, everyone. Only together can all aspects of university activity be developed with quality; only together can the group of people who interact with it be looked after in accordance with their expectations.

The second practical consequence is that reputation management requires a particular form of governance. Or, to paraphrase a well-known Spanish philosopher, a “new managerial sensitivity.” A sensitivity that is based on knowledge, that takes into account tangible and intangible values; that knows how to lead according to the mission, without losing sight of the objectives; that is transparent, tells the truth and knows how to dialogue; that counts on the participation of employees; that is capable of establishing solid relationships; that feels the common good as its own. This is the profile of managers who take responsibility for reputation. And this profile is particularly suited to the government and management of the university.

But just as every organisation needs a department to coordinate economic matters and manage tangible values, every government team also needs a department to coordinate communication tasks and help manage intangible values. This is, in my opinion, the mission of communication departments. We will look at this when we answer the last question.

 

4. What can communication contribute?

The reputation-building process we described above gives us some clues about the work of the communications department, which must be responsible for energizing this process so that it does not stop or stagnate in any of its phases.

The first task of the communications department is to help make the corporate identity explicit. It is about highlighting the brand, with its essential attributes, which make the institution unique, different, recognizable. This task involves a process of collective reflection, until reaching a reflective corporate identity, which generates a sense of belonging internally and a capacity for differentiation externally.

Based on a defined and shared identity, communication helps to consolidate corporate culture. It does so through qualified internal communication, which recognises employees as protagonists and ambassadors of the brand; which considers them participants and not mere recipients of information; which counts on them to embody the values and to maintain relationships with the organisation's stakeholders.

One of the most specifically communicative tasks of the department is to prepare the discourse and maintain the dialogue with the interlocutors. This work includes writing texts, choosing photographs, editing videos, preparing information to disseminate internally and externally. In this way, the discourse is defined and content is given to the conversations that are held with the interlocutors. stakeholdersThe task is bidirectional, because it also involves listening, interpreting, translating and transmitting messages received through formal and informal channels from the different interest groups that interact with the organization.

Through relationships and conversations, through listening, the communications department gains accurate knowledge of the expectations of stakeholders, the social needs of the environment, and the organization's contribution possibilities. From this knowledge, innovative proposals are born that help improve the organization.

We end with a brief conclusion.

 

CONCLUSION

The reputation of universities is a sum of intangible assets, which has great value and needs to be cultivated. It has an objective dimension, which is the quality of all university activity. And a subjective dimension, since it is the result of the perceptions of the different publics, who are not mere spectators but protagonists of the life of the university. For this reason, it is necessary to be attentive to making the intangible assets grow, in addition to the tangible ones.

From all that we have said, it can be deduced that universities face three major challenges in the matter that concerns us today:

1. That university governing teams assume that their work includes the management of intangibles and become qualified for it;
2. That all university professionals feel like protagonists and ambassadors of the reputation of their university, which is cultivated in every detail of their work and their relationships;
3. Communications teams must take charge of the fact that their task is not merely technical, since it has a dimension of creating culture, listening and elaborating discourse. They are the “gardeners” of reputation.

If we work this way, it will be easier for everyone to achieve:

that objective quality becomes perceived quality;

that quality becomes reputation;

that the university receives the respect and social support it deserves;

that we cultivate such beautiful campuses –in form and substance - like that of Cambridge and that of the University of Piura in different countries around the world.

Thank you so much.