Personal branding has taken off in recent years, as social media has enabled us to build our brand reputation in newfound ways. I suspect most of the time when we think of personal branding, we think of it in terms of how it can help us “get” a job. Recent research reminds us, however, that it can also help us “keep” a job as well.

The study looked at the way organizations, and especially public sector departments, work to build up their media presence, and how when it comes to budgetary allocation, and even departmental survival, this presence can play a crucial role.

Cultivating reputation

It’s believed that organizational reputation typically consists of technical, moral, performative, and procedural elements. The research aims to understand how these dimensions are affected by the media and the impact this has on the survival of the department.

“To our knowledge, no quantitative studies have outlined the different types of organizational reputation in the context of media salience and agency termination. Answering these questions is important as it can help agencies learn about how reputation works in agency termination and implement necessary actions to mitigate the risk of termination,” the researchers explain.

The researchers analyzed nearly 500,000 articles related to various government agencies published in the People’s Daily, the official outlet for the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, between 1949 and 2019. The articles were assessed according to the four types of reputation mentioned earlier.

Obviously, the People’s Daily is far from an impartial source, and rarely openly criticizes government agencies. Nonetheless, the researchers argue that media coverage remains vital for agency survival. What’s more, they believe that neutral communication can also help to establish the different dimensions of reputation.

Risk of termination

After analyzing the news reports, the researchers discovered that media coverage appeared to reduce the risk that an agency might be terminated, with the number of stories strongly linked with the probability of closure.

Interestingly, this wasn’t constant across each of the dimensions, with procedural coverage much more influential than performative, moral, and technical dimensions.

“This study is the first empirical research documenting the changing dynamics of reputation management of central agencies in China. We also established the link between reputation symbols and agency termination,” the authors conclude.