Aesthetics based corporate reputation management in the context of higher education

Abstract

The importance of building good corporate reputations has gained a wide interest from theory as well as practice. However, literature in corporate reputation is mostly oriented towards the business organizations. Now in addition, nonprofit organizations are coming to realize that they have much to learn from private organizations and that corporate reputation as a management technique is particularly appealing in the public sector. Interest in corporate reputation management of higher education (HE) institutions has surged in recent years. Many higher education institutions have suffered from declining government support and faced growing demands for accountability and efficiency in their performance. To compensate for the decline in government funding, a number of higher education institutions began exploring corporate reputation management as a tool for meeting the challenges. One could ask if it is not sufficient, that higher education institution performs well in education and research. While that used to be the case, nowadays it is not enough.[...]