Opinion | Judging reputations when it comes to business is never an exact science
Judging reputations when it comes to business is, in reality, neither quantifiable nor tangible
The best joke floating around in the wake of the scandal that has sunk Reverend Paul Flowers, the former boss of Britain's Co-operative Bank, is that his activities threaten to give bankers a bad name.
For readers who are having trouble keeping up, Flowers was video-taped buying hard drugs and then there was something about rent boys and, by the by, under his stewardship the bank suffered a capital shortfall of some HK$19 billion.
Well, I suppose we are starting to get blasé about large sums of money going AWOL in banks and, frankly, it is far more intriguing to watch video images of a bank chief and former clergyman buying cocaine and amphetamines.
Reputation is a matter of impression and … it is not an exact science
Scandal is at the extreme end of something called reputation that can make or break businesses. Clearly it is also at the juicy end of this narrative and, as such, often obscures the really crucial nature of reputation for businesses. I have written about this quite a lot over the years but must admit that it all seemed rather theoretical before being faced with the nuanced reality of reputational issues when running a business.
Sensitive readers who swear by the gospel of MBA courses should probably skip the rest of this article because it scandalously ignores some of the things these courses preach about "reputational issues" and, even, "reputational leverage".
The MBA method of communication likes to accompany discussion of more or less everything with impressive-looking PowerPoints containing flow charts showing how things work.
The problem is that the intangibles of reputation for business are not, in reality, amenable to fine theory nor are they quantifiable.