Investigating corporate reputation of the Eastern Cape Provincial Government

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.