How Environmentalists Help Manage Corporate Reputations
Environmentalists Help Manage Corporate Reputations
Sharon Beder
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Citation: Sharon Beder, ‘Environmentalists Help Manage Corporate Reputation: Changing Perceptions not Behaviour’, Ecopolitics 1(4), Spring 2002, pp. 60-72.
This is a final version submitted for publication.
Minor editorial changes may have subsequently been made.
Sharon Beder's Other Publications
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Abstract
Environmentalists have traditionally drawn attention to environmental problems by highlighting corporate misdeeds and thereby damaged the good reputation of those companies. However, nowadays those very corporations are drawing on environmentalists to help repair their reputations. Nike and BP are two examples of companies that have adopted some environmental reforms as part of their reputation management strategies and received the praise of environmental groups for doing so. Yet both continue with the practices that earned them poor reputations in the first place. Clearly the role of environmentalists in working with such companies is misguided and ineffective in terms of long-term environmental sustainability.
Reputation management has therefore become an important part of doing business. But reputation management is often a public relations activity that has little to do with social responsibility. Instead, corporations spend much effort and money on creating the impression of responsibility. They gain credibility for their claims of responsibility through token reforms, codes of conduct and by aligning themselves with amenable environmental and human rights groups as well as specially created coalitions of such groups (Beder 2000, chapter 8).
The Increasing Importance of Reputation Management
Reputation is increasingly important to the value of companies. In his book on Image Marketing, Joe Marconi (1996, p. xiv) notes that during the 1990s reputation took on such critical importance for large
Sharon Beder
________________________________________
Citation: Sharon Beder, ‘Environmentalists Help Manage Corporate Reputation: Changing Perceptions not Behaviour’, Ecopolitics 1(4), Spring 2002, pp. 60-72.
This is a final version submitted for publication.
Minor editorial changes may have subsequently been made.
Sharon Beder's Other Publications
________________________________________
Abstract
Environmentalists have traditionally drawn attention to environmental problems by highlighting corporate misdeeds and thereby damaged the good reputation of those companies. However, nowadays those very corporations are drawing on environmentalists to help repair their reputations. Nike and BP are two examples of companies that have adopted some environmental reforms as part of their reputation management strategies and received the praise of environmental groups for doing so. Yet both continue with the practices that earned them poor reputations in the first place. Clearly the role of environmentalists in working with such companies is misguided and ineffective in terms of long-term environmental sustainability.
Reputation management has therefore become an important part of doing business. But reputation management is often a public relations activity that has little to do with social responsibility. Instead, corporations spend much effort and money on creating the impression of responsibility. They gain credibility for their claims of responsibility through token reforms, codes of conduct and by aligning themselves with amenable environmental and human rights groups as well as specially created coalitions of such groups (Beder 2000, chapter 8).
The Increasing Importance of Reputation Management
Reputation is increasingly important to the value of companies. In his book on Image Marketing, Joe Marconi (1996, p. xiv) notes that during the 1990s reputation took on such critical importance for large