Abstract:
There is currently paucity of academic work on the public sector reputation management the
world over. Most literature has studied corporate reputation from the private sector
perspective. The extant literature amply shows that reputation is equally important for the
public sector organisations because they experience more or less the same challenges as the
private sector organisations. Luoma-aho (2015) argues that public sector reputation still
remains an underused resource, and much of the reputation literature concentrates on
corporations. Therefore, this study addresses this knowledge gap by investigating the
reputation of the Eastern Cape Provincial Government.
An extensive literature review and empirical data indicate that concepts such as public views
of corporate reputation, media coverage and emotional attachment influence the reputation
of the Eastern Cape Provincial Government. The study is premised on the legitimacy theory.
Guthrie (2006) states that legitimacy theory relies on the notion that there is a ‘social
contract’ between a company and the society in which it operates. Specifically, it is considered
that an organisation’s survival will be threatened if society perceives that the organisation has
breached its social contract. Where society is not satisfied that the organisation is operating
in a legitimate manner, society will revoke the organisation’s ‘contract’ to continue its
operations. Furthermore, legitimacy is achieved by demonstrating that companies’ activities
are concordant with social values. If a company cannot justify its continued operation, then,
in a sense, the community may revoke its contract.
This study followed an interpretive basic qualitative research approach and it sought to gain
an in-depth description of the public sector reputation from the point of view of the Eastern
Cape citizens. It emphasises the role of qualitative research as directed at providing an indepth and interpreted understanding of the social world of research participants by learning
about their social and material circumstances, their experiences, and perspective. Furthermore, the study is exploratory as it seeks to explore and understand the research
phenomenon and requires the researcher to undertake an in-depth analysis of the
phenomenon. The data for the study were collected through in-depth interviews and
participant observations. For the in-depth interviews a semi-structured interview schedule
was developed as the research instrument, which provided an important means to probe
participants and seek fresh insights on the phenomenon. The study included participant
observations of two community engagement sessions, which enabled the researcher to
observe the views of the general public towards the Eastern Cape Provincial Government.
A purposive sampling was used for the selection of study participants. The researcher selected
five organised structures that represent community members from diverse backgrounds.
They comprised business, media, youth, NGOs and government officials from contrasting
geographical areas of the Eastern Cape, who work closely with the Eastern Cape Provincial
Government and had perspectives on its reputation. Three representatives from each
structure participated in the interviews and a total of 15 of participants were interviewed.
The transcribed field notes were analysed through manual and automated data analysis, for
which Leximancer Software was used. Leximancer provided a text analytics tool that could be
used to analyse the content of collections of textual documents and to display the extracted
information visually. The study shows that the Eastern Cape Provincial Government lacks
effective systems to manage its reputation. Literature has shown that good reputation results
from all perceptions and assessments that employees and the public form about an
organisation with regard to the performance, quality of services, innovation, workplace
environment, leadership, governance and citizenship of the organisation. Research findings
have furthermore revealed that people have negative views about the Eastern Cape Provincial
Government. The poor perceptions about the Eastern Cape Provincial Government are
primarily influenced by its inability to provide quality services. This further reflects poor
performance and lack of effective leadership. The provision of the quality services is adversely
impacted by the perceived poor governance, which manifests in the proliferation of cases of
malpractices and unethical conduct within government institutions. The study shows that relations between the media and the Eastern Cape Provincial
Government are poor, and this is largely typified in the persistent negative media coverage of
government. Poor communication is identified as the main trigger of the media’s negative
reporting. The study has revealed that there is poor public emotional attachment to the
Provincial Government. Due to perceived poor performance and lack of services, people
generally hold a negative view of the Eastern Cape Provincial Government. The study shows
that people do not hold positive feelings about the Eastern Cape Provincial Government, and
trust in government has considerably deteriorated. This study extends reputation literature
by showing that public feelings and trust can enhance emotional attachment to government,
thus guaranteeing a formidable public sector reputation.