This week, we had the pleasure of interviewing Santiago Fernández-Gubieda Lacalle, Chief Reputation Officer and Executive Director of the Centre for University Governance and Reputation, at the University of Navarra.
Santiago, in your opinion, what is reputation and why is it so important in higher education?
It is common to state that university reputation is the set of beliefs, perceptions and attitudes expressed by stakeholders to acknowledge the nature and academic performance of a university in terms of whether (or not) it has met their expectations over a period of time.
Reputation is important because of the impact it has on the organisation. A good reputation is the best engine for attracting talented individuals because people want to be part of a strong community and collaborative projects. It’s the best mechanism for maintaining social mobility. I often say that reputation is an intangible value with many tangible effects – quality recruitment is one of them.
People also confuse brand for reputation. Brand is about expressing the organisation and reputation is how the stakeholder perceives that expression. So, whilst brand is the expression, reputation should be thought of as the perception.
But this idea of reputation is somewhat misunderstood. Everyone notices when it is missing. Many agree that reputation is about university perceptions and values. But it’s also to do with people’s beliefs that trigger attitudes (positive and negative), areas of recommendation and legitimacy. So, it’s important that these perceptions don’t occur in a vacuum and for a long period of time without being addressed.
Positioning is so critical in occupying a unique mind space in the target audience’s mind and allowing them to make decisions quickly and easily. In the land of 4500 choices in America alone, institutions must be known for something. Moving forward especially, I’d rather have a specific positioning than try to be everything to everyone and fall short – something that higher education does too often.
When I was at Purdue University, we were always thinking about the student we are ‘for’ and how we position ourselves to them. Using the earlier teaching example, do we want Purdue’s College of Education to be the best, for instance, at preparing graduates to become STEM teachers? The best with special needs populations? The best at teaching online? What is our unique position and value proposition? When you zoom out to the university level, you’ve got to think about what your institution stands for, who it is for, and why should anyone care.
How can universities invest in reputation management?
A good operational model is crucial in understanding how reputation is built, performed, and cultivated. I like to explain this through a triangular approach, as this brings very practical results in the real world. The three dimensions of reputation are inside-out, outside-in and side-to-side. Inside-out refers to the institutional character or behaviour, which is the source of good academic performance. Outside-in is the classic view of reputation – it’s about perceptions of that university. Side-to-side drives value in collaboration. And so a good operational model must refer to all three practices of reputation in the triangle. It encompasses communication with all stakeholders and involves them in senior decisions.
In short, a university’s strategy for reputation should be about actions. This involves cultivating an identity, maintaining academic excellence, driving collaboration with its community, and learning from environmental trends. If you understand this triangle and its practical applications, you have the potential to make good strategic decisions.
Investments into reputational management should be made on two levels:
- Consider reputation as a university governance principle. The greatest investment decision is not financial, but strategic. It’s important that leaders realise that reputation can only be cultivated if it is thought of as a main governance principle. Reputation is crucial in informing decision making at senior levels, and so it needs to be prioritised in leadership positions across the university.
- The second investment must be made in terms of corporate communication and its professional capabilities. Reputation demands a change in communicating, as it moves from functional tasks to strategic outputs. The reputation lens transforms the corporate communications and more broadly, the whole institution. This investment is about creating a lasting relationship between internal and external stakeholders, and it opens listening systems within the organisation from the bottom up.
The reputational lens transforms the organisation and qualifies university governance; it makes it more sensitive to purpose, values, and internal culture; it activates open and lasting relationships with internal and external stakeholders; it opens listening systems within the organisation; it equips leaders with listening habits and leadership; it’s concerned with contributing to the common good and learning from the environment. This is about applying the reputation triangle to university governance and management.
