When Outsiders Step In: Investigating the Phenomenon of Reputational Support

Abstract

This article introduces reputational support: when individuals who are not part of a public organization publicly explain or promote that organization. Whereas existing research focuses on organizations’ reputation management, reputational support highlights the relevance of unassociated actors’ behavior in organizations’ environment. Relying on social psychology insights, I explore an extreme case of the motivations behind reputational support and its perception and evaluation from the organization. Combining media content analysis and semi-structured interviews, I show that although helping the organization was not a primary motivation, employees perceived and appreciated reputational support. Thus, reputational support constitutes a valuable resource for organizations.

Keywords

organizational reputation reputational support child and adult protection prosocial behavior media content analysis semi-structured interviews

Introducing Reputational Support

This article introduces the phenomenon of reputational support: when individuals who are not part of a public organization publicly explain and promote the organization. What motivates individuals to provide such support? How does a public organization perceive and evaluate the support?

Recent research has established the fundamental importance of public organizations’ reputation (Malay & Fairholm, 2020; Overman et al., 2020). Commonly conceptualized as “a set of beliefs about an organization’s capacities, intentions, history, and mission that are embedded in a network of multiple audiences” (Carpenter & Krause, 2012, p. 26), organizations not only depend on their reputation to attract motivated and skilled employees (Busuioc & Lodge, 2016). They also rely on it to establish and maintain their autonomy in the political system (Hinterleitner & Sager, 2019; Teodoro & An, 2018). As a result, a plethora of analyses examines “reputation management,” organizational attempts to favorably influence their reputation (Rimkutė, 2020a).

When looking at political debates, it is striking that not only public organizations explain their activities to and promote themselves among the public. Consider three examples:

The European Central Bank [. . .] decided on 18 March to use another 750 billion euros to buy up government bonds and push down interest rates. [. . .] Without the ECB’s interventions, the euro crisis would have repeated itself long ago - only worse.¹ (Herrmann, 2020, journalist)

As the coronavirus crisis deepens, the British public’s admiration for the NHS [National Health Service, publicly funded health system of the United Kingdom] is justifiably reaching new heights. Never in our history has this cherished institution been more vital to the survival of our life. In the face of appalling risks and unprecedented burdens, the health service’s 1.5 million staff are showing a remarkable combination of heroism, compassion and stoicism. (McKinstry, 2020, journalist)

Over the past two years, [Republican US president Donald Trump] has attacked the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation, domestic intelligence and security service], [. . .] suggest[ing] that the FBI is part of a “deep state,” and politically biased against him. It’s my view that these claims are false and that they’re harmful. [. . .] The FBI is not a corrupt institution, or the “deep state.” It is not acting against the president for political purposes. (Feinstein, 2019, then Democratic senator of California)

Although these statements stem from a wide diversity of contexts, they share the following characteristic: If they had been they uttered by representatives of the focal public organizations, they would be classified as reputation management. However, none of the authors belong to the organization they talk about. I investigate this phenomenon, namely individuals who are not part of a public organization explaining and promoting it in public, as “reputational support.”

The analysis of reputational support is a first step for research on reputation in largely untapped areas. Although studies of reputation management generate valuable insights, their strong focus on organizations’ behavior often neglects the fact that organizations are embedded in complex institutional and political networks. This implies that more than the organizations’ actions might influence their reputation. For example, the actions of associated organizations and individuals might enhance or damage an organization’s reputation (Sataøen & Wæraas, 2013). Unassociated individuals also might induce changes in an organization’s reputation. This article seeks to shed light on the behavior of unassociated actors.

Reputational support also is of interest to public organizations. If unassociated actors describe an organization or express themselves favorably about it, their statements may have greater credibility with the organization’s audiences. Contrary to an organization’s statements, such utterances do not appear to be self-serving (Westphal et al., 2012, p. 219). Thus, reputational support may provide organizations with a legitimacy they are not able to generate themselves. In times of populist propaganda and rising distrust of “the state” in many Western democracies (Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2018), such legitimacy becomes increasingly relevant. It is in organizations’ interest, then, to explore this phenomenon.

To provide initial insights on reputational support, I investigate two aspects. On the one hand, I examine the underlying motivations for the behavior. This is crucial for the study of any behavior, as some behaviors are not the result of a set motivation but may be an unintended product of striving for another goal (Heider, 1958, p. 100). On the other hand, understanding a behavior requires an examination of not only its antecedents but also its outcomes. How an organization that receives reputational support perceives and evaluates this behavior is a central aspect of this side of the causal chain.

The remainder of the article is structured as follows. In the next section, I situate reputational support in the literature on organizational reputation, thereby substantiating the theoretical gap I address. To provide theoretical guidelines for the investigation of reputational support, in the subsequent section, I leverage insights from social psychology on prosocial behavior. the fourth section introduces the research design. The analysis focuses on an extreme case—an adequate case selection strategy given an under-researched topic, allowing for the extraction of additional theoretical propositions. Applying a sequential mixed-methods approach, I first perform a media content analysis to identify individuals who provided reputational support and second conduct semi-structured interviews both with such individuals and with employees from the organization. In the findings section, I show that various individuals provided reputational support in the extreme-case setting. Although they were not primarily motivated by helping the organization, employees perceived and appreciated the support as a means to maintain their self-esteem in difficult times. In the discussion section, the findings and existing scholarship are used for a broader conceptualization of reputational support, its antecedents, and its outcomes. Additionally, this section highlights potential avenues for future research.

Situating Reputational Support in Reputation Research

I conceptualize the phenomenon of individuals that are not part of a public organization explaining and promoting the organization in public as “reputational support,” thereby situating it in the wider scholarship on organizational reputation. Research on organizational reputation has gained traction in public administration since the publication of seminal works by (Carpenter, 2010; Carpenter & Krause, 2012). Exhibiting connections to other concepts such as organizational identity or trust, reputation provides distinctive analytical features. In contrast to organizational identity, a concept that focuses on how an organization’s employees perceive their organization as unique and distinct from other organizations (Chun, 2005; Whetten, 2006), reputation is an amalgam of perceptions from individuals both inside and outside an organization (Bustos, 2021, p. 734). Furthermore, other than trust, which may be defined as a “voluntary act based on psychological state of positive expectation in the face of vulnerability and risk” (Choudhury, 2008, p. 590), reputation is an individual-level feature, but a “collective sum of perceptions” (Bustos, 2021, p. 735) that may also include negative expectations (Malay & Fairholm, 2020). These features of reputation allow for the investigation of individual (Overman et al., 2020), organizational (Rimkutė, 2018), and societal dynamics (Kuenzler, 2021). Furthermore, they pave the way for analyzing reputational implications for public legitimacy (Wæraas & Sataøen, 2015) and accountability (Busuioc & Lodge, 2016), among others. Reputation also may be fruitfully connected with concepts such as organizational identity and trust, as the discussion section shows.

Research on organizational reputation has not yet focused on the phenomenon of reputational support. Literature on the behavior of its organizational “twin,” reputation management, generally does not investigate its underlying motivations, as the well-established relevance of reputation suggests that it is in organizations’ core interest to conduct reputation management (Busuioc & Lodge, 2016, p. 250). Furthermore, while external actors’ behavior often is seen to trigger reputation management—for example, public allegations that need to be addressed (Rimkutė, 2020b), studies commonly focus on the organizations’ reactions and not on the external behavior itself. Lastly, whereas research on organizational reputation frequently conceptualizes external behavior as a reputational threat (Doering et al., 2021; van der Veer, 2021), to the best of my knowledge, supportive behavior has largely been ignored.

Thus, as literature on organizational reputation lacks specific starting points for the investigation of reputational support, in the next section I turn to social psychology scholarship.

Reputational Support as a Prosocial Behavior

Social psychology features a well-established strand of research on prosocial behavior (Esteve et al., 2016). Prosocial behavior is defined as an act that is seen as “generally beneficial to other people” (Penner et al., 2005, p. 366). It manifests in various forms, ranging from spontaneous offers of help in an emergency to organized acts of resource sharing and cooperation and institutionalized variants such as volunteering (Shane et al., 2021, p. 22). Since reputational support involves individuals that are not part of a public organization explaining and promoting the organization, reputational support may be conceived as a form of prosocial behavior: Such acts are “generally beneficial to other people,” specifically organizational members who may benefit from an improved public understanding of the organization. This section overviews the state of knowledge about the motivations of individuals who engage in prosocial behavior and about the perception and evaluation of this behavior by its recipients. These social psychology findings serve as first guidelines for the empirical analysis of reputational support.

Motivations of Prosocial Behavior

The question of why individuals engage in prosocial behavior is subject to intense debate (Martí-Vilar et al., 2019, p. 912). Research focuses on two areas:so-called “distal” motives such as genetic or biologic predispositions for prosocial behavior and “proximate” motives, motives that have their “roots in the proximal circumstances of [a] need situation” (Schroeder & Graziano, 2015, p. 8). Various scholars point out that distal motives are neither necessary nor sufficient explanations for prosocial behavior in real-life situations (Eisenberg et al., 2016, p. 1668; Schroeder & Graziano, 2018, p. 276). Hence, in the following, I focus on proximate motives.

The dominant view in social psychology states that egoism drives prosocial behavior (Nadler, 2019, pp. 471–472). This occurs mostly via self-centered cost-benefit calculations, to “reduce aversive arousal resulting from seeing another person suffering” (Stürmer & Snyder, 2009, p. 36). The so-called “empathy-altruism hypothesis,” however, challenges this claim. Developed by Batson (1987, 2011), this empathy-altruism hypothesis states that under certain conditions, humans may feel for a person in need and develop a motivation that centers around helping this person (Habashi et al., 2016, p. 1178). The resulting behavior is not self- but other-oriented. In line with Heider (1958), it is not the behavior itself but the underlying goal-directed motivation that establishes the difference between egoism and altruism (Batson, 2011, p. 211).

Batson complemented the empathy-altruism hypothesis with a framework of four motivational types for prosocial behavior: egoism, altruism, collectivism, and principlism (Batson, 1994). While egoism aims at increasing one’s own welfare, altruism and collectivism focus on another individual’s or a group’s welfare, respectively. The last category, principlism, refers to a motivation that focuses on the upholding of a moral tenet (Batson, 1994, pp. 604–608).

Although the empathy-altruism hypothesis has been challenged, to date attempts at falsification have failed (Schroeder & Graziano, 2015, pp. 23–24). Even so, one important challenge remains–the difficulty of identifying the dominant motivation underlying a prosocial behavior (Shane et al., 2021, p. 22). This is exacerbated by the recognition that one behavior may be driven by multiple motivations simultaneously (Batson, 2011, p. 212).

Perception and Evaluation of Prosocial Behavior

Social psychology research also focuses on the recipient side of prosocial behavior. Most studies, however, presume the perception of prosocial behavior as given, directly investigating its evaluation and other effects. By contrast, Schroeder and Graziano (2015, p. 4) highlight the possibility that prosocial behavior might not always be noticed by the recipient; this is an especially relevant aspect in the context of reputational support, where the provider and recipient may be geographically and temporally distant. Bolger and Amarel (2007) move this aspect center stage by testing the effect of prosocial behavior that is deliberately concealed from its recipient. They show that invisible prosocial behavior tends to be more beneficial for recipients than overt prosocial behavior (Bolger & Amarel, 2007, p. 473), presumably because the overt variant might make recipients question their competence (Zee & Bolger, 2019, p. 316; cf. below). Although invisible prosocial behavior should not automatically be presumed beneficial, Bolger and Amarel demonstrate that one should pay attention to the perception aspect when examining the effects of prosocial behavior on the recipient side.

As indicated above, once perceived, the recipient’s evaluation of prosocial behavior is not necessarily positive. Instead, prosocial behavior may be experienced as a “mixed blessing” (Fisher et al., 1982, p. 27) or even judged negatively (Nadler & Fisher, 1986, pp. 82–83). Studies point to different factors that may shape a recipient’s evaluation. First, it matters whether the prosocial act enhances the recipient’s autonomy or leaves them in a state of dependency (Halabi & Nadler, 2009; Nadler, 2002). Second, characteristics of the recipient such as self-esteem or sense of competence are central (Nadler & Fisher, 1986; Weinstein & Ryan, 2010). Third, the characteristics of the person engaging in prosocial behavior and their relationship to the recipient may play a role, for example, their similarities or differences in status (Halabi et al., 2016; Nadler, 2015).

Research Design

Having first established theoretical guidelines for the investigation of reputational support using social psychology literature, I now proceed to the empirical analysis. As the phenomenon of reputational support until now was not subjected to systematic examination, I analyze an extreme case. Gerring (2008, pp. 653–654) recommends selecting an extreme case as a suitable venue to conduct exploratory examinations and to establish initial propositions for future research. Extreme cases are often “considered to be prototypical or paradigmatic of some phenomena of interest, (as) concepts are often defined by their extremes” (Gerring, 2008, p. 653). I present the case in the subsection below and explain why it constitutes an extreme case of reputational support.

Methodologically, I rely on a sequential mixed-methods approach (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018; Mele & Belardinelli, 2019) that combines a media content analysis of newspaper articles with semi-structured interviews. While the media analysis serves the purpose of identifying individuals who provided reputational support, the interviews allow for an in-depth exploration of the phenomenon with individuals both providing and receiving reputational support.

Extreme Case: Reputational Support for the Swiss Child and Adult Protection Agencies (CAPA)

Reputational support for the Swiss Child and Adult Protection Agencies (CAPA) serves as an extreme case for exploring the phenomenon of reputational support.

CAPA includes professional, subnational agencies charged with supporting individuals who are unable to assume their rights, for example, children, persons with cognitive disabilities, or some elderly (Hildbrand et al., 2020; Kuenzler et al., 2022; Stauffer et al., 2023). Established in 2013 as the replacement for a lay-authority system, they organize various kinds of legal and social assistance. If they conclude that an individual is endangered, they modify or reassign legal guardianship relations, by, for instance, transferring an abused child to a foster family.

In January 2015, a regional CAPA in the canton of Zurich was involved in an implementation tragedy. On New Year’s Day 2015, a mother suffocated her two children of two and five years. After an unsuccessful suicide attempt, she justified the double infanticide as having wanted to protect her children from the CAPA. The children had been temporarily placed in a children’s home due to fraud investigations into their parents. For the Christmas holidays, CAPA had allowed the children to stay with their mother but had required them to return to the home by mid-January.

Although only one regional CAPA had been involved in the accusations surrounding the double infanticide, the public debate quickly spread to all CAPA in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. The agencies became the subject of massive public outrage, with graffiti calling them “murderers” and death threats posted on social media. In light of these massive attacks, some CAPA employees even received police protection.

Shortly after the tragedy became known, the regional CAPA and other representatives of the agencies tried to explain the case to the public, but they soon were overwhelmed and ceased to communicate. Simultaneously, they experienced 19 days during which CAPA’s political principals did not officially mitigate the reputational threat. Only on 23 and 24 January did the regional parliament and government publish two reports that partly cleared the regional CAPA from responsibility for the tragedy and reasserted that the CAPA generally performed well.

Earlier media analyses of this period show that several individuals engaged in reputational support for CAPA. Given the public outrage and the absence of backing from CAPA’s principals, providing reputational support required more determination than in normal times: Since the atmosphere against CAPA was so heavily charged, one risked getting into the line of fire when supporting them. Thus, the potential costs of supportive actions were notably higher than when there was no public outrage.² In such a situation, I expect these individuals’ motivations to have been particularly pronounced. This, in turn, makes them a suitable extreme case to explore the phenomenon of reputational support.

Media Content Analysis

I now turn to the data used in the study, media articles and semi-structured interviews. Corresponding to time just described, the main period of investigation was January 3, when the first newspaper reports appeared on the double infanticide, through January 22, 2015, the day before reports on the CAPA were published. To reach an enhanced understanding of the characteristics of period and to explore whether the CAPA also received reputational support when their reputation was less threatened, I complement the media analysis with two reference periods: October 12 to 30, 2014 and March 28 to April 16, 2015, each two months from the beginning and ending of the investigation.

To identify individuals who provided reputational support, I examined all articles mentioning the CAPA in three daily (Blick, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Tages-Anzeiger) and two weekly (Weltwoche, Wochenzeitung) newspapers. The daily newspapers have the highest circulation in Switzerland and include one tabloid (Blick), one central leftist (Tages-Anzeiger), and one liberal newspaper (Neue Zürcher Zeitung). The weekly newspapers complement the range of perspectives on the topic, including the most-read left-wing (Wochenzeitung) and right-wing (Weltwoche) mass publications. I acquired the articles from the Factiva media database, using key words that combined the German terms for “child protection,” “adult protection,” and “CAPA.” (For more information, see. Appendix 1).

The coding units consist of statements about the CAPA, delivered by any speaker. I coded each statement for its valence (Maor & Sulitzeanu-Kenan, 2016), identifying its speaker and the role they assumed when making the statement (e.g., CAPA employee, journalist, private individual). Finally, I categorized speakers as (non-)stakeholders of CAPA, using Freeman’s classic definition of stakeholders as “any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organization’s objectives” (Freeman, 1984, p. 46). This served as a first indication of individuals’ egoistic versus altruistic motivations—a question to be explored in greater more depth in the semi-structured interviews. Stakeholders include, for example, the CAPA’s political principals and their target groups or collaborators in policy implementation. By contrast, celebrities, academics, or political parties are not categorized as stakeholders.

Semi-Structured Interviews

The semi-structured interviews targeted two groups of individuals.First, I interviewed five individuals who provided reputational support about their motivations. Second, interviews with four CAPA employees and a CAPA employee instructor provided information about CAPA’s perceptions and evaluation of reputational support. To enhance trust, I guaranteed all interviewees’ anonymity.

To identify individuals who provided reputational support for the interviews, I filtered the three datasets to identify speakers who are not CAPA employees and whose statements appear most frequently. Since I am interested in individuals who supported CAPA, I exclude speakers who made predominantly negative statements.³ Further, I introduce a threshold of eight statements by an individual that needed to appear for them to be considered as having provided reputational support. Although the threshold arguably is rather high, for this initial investigation I want to minimize the possibility of individuals being incorrectly categorized as providing reputational support; in the context of political debate, it would be problematic to assume that any single action of describing, clarifying, and explaining an organization is an indicator of reputational support. For example, journalists report daily on current events, and explanations concerning involved actors are often necessary for contextualization. Only an accumulation of such behavior by an individual points to the presence of reputational support.

The interviewed CAPA employees work at different regional CAPA, and all have been in their current or other positions in the agencies since 2013. All are in leading positions, and they were chosen to represent a diverse set of geographic regions. In what follows, I refer to them as CAPA employees 1 to 4. In addition, i conducted one interview conducted with a CAPA employee instructor at an institution for higher education. I selected the instructor based on a substantial screening of the policy field. The instructor’s perspective is valuable, as s/he has considerable expertise regarding CAPA, especially concerning political developments around the agencies. (Please see Appendix 3 for additional information on the interviews).

Whereas the interviews with individuals providing reputational support focus on their motivations, the interviews with CAPA employees and the CAPA instructor center on their perceptions of reputational support and their evaluation of the phenomenon. The detailed questionnaires are available upon request.

To analyze the data, I employed open coding (Patton, 2015, p. 792) to gauge individuals’ motivations for reputational support as well as the CAPA employees’ perception and evaluation of it. Open coding was followed by application of Mayring’s techniques of qualitative content analysis. This strategy involved first the reduction of coded material to central themes, second the explication of incomprehensible material by consulting additional material to increase understanding, and third the structuration of material according to theoretically pre-determined aspects (Mayring, 2015, pp. 65–68). For the analysis at hand, no material had to be explicated. Structuration followed the theoretical considerations drawn from social psychology (see above).

Findings

In presentig the results, I first elaborate on individuals who provided reputational support to CAPA. Next, I summarize the motivations of these individuals providing reputational support as well as the perceptions and evaluations of reputational support by CAPA employees and the CAPA instructor.

Individuals Who Provided Reputational Support to CAPA

Table 1 provides an overview of the three periods the media analysis examined. The two reference periods before and after the main period highlight the magnitude of the outrage against CAPA in January 2015. While actors commented in times of more “normal” media coverage when the CAPA were a topic, after the double infanticide the number of individuals commenting greatly expanded.

Table 1.

Three Periods of Investigation—Debate Characteristics.

Variables	Before (12.10.–30.10.2014)	Main (3.1.–22.1.2015)	After (28.3.–16.4.2015)
Individuals (%)
CAPA representatives	2 (9)	2 (2)	6 (26)
External individuals	20 (91)	107 (98)	17 (74)
Total	22	109	23
Statements (%)
Positive	1 (3)	27 (10)	0 (0)
Neutral	9 (29)	147 (54)	22 (76)
Negative	21 (68)	100 (36)	7 (24)
Total	31	274	29

Note. The table displays absolute frequencies and column percentages in parentheses.

During the main period of investigation, two CAPA representatives and 107 external individuals participated in the debate, 21 of whom (19.63%) were CAPA stakeholders. Table 2 displays the most active individuals not belonging to the CAPA.⁴ The grey bars highlight individuals who mostly made negative statements about CAPA. As their behavior contradicts the behavior of reputational support, I do not consider them in the following analysis. Although Table 2 may give the impression that all CAPA stakeholders made predominantly negative statements, the complete dataset (available upon request) shows that a majority of all stakeholders (n = 13, 61.91%) made mainly neutral or positive comments about the CAPA. Hence, reputational support was provided by those who were both non-stakeholders and stakeholders.

Table 2.

Number of Statements by Non-CAPA Individuals during the Main Period of Investigation.

Individual	Stakeholder?	Total	Positive	Neutral	Negative

Note. Includes only individuals with six or more statements; see Appendix 2 for individuals with five or fewer. The table is sorted in decreasing order by number of total statements per individual. Individuals with less than six statements are not displayed. Individuals are marked in grey if they display more negative statements than the sum of positive and neutral statements. They are not considered for the subsequent analysis.

Please note that this categorization resulted from the media content analysis. Based on the subsequent semi-structured interview conducted with academic 1, he was recategorized as a stakeholder later in the analysis.

Although Table 2 shows that predominantly criticical individuals featured prominently in the media during the outrage, it is striking that they do not appear at the top of the list. Instead, one sees non-stakeholder individuals who made mainly neutral and positive statements. Thus, although they were in the minority as a group in the media, their communication overall was more elaborate than that of individuals making negative statements. Even so, the non-stakeholders who mainly made neutral and positive statements did not refrain from criticism, overall their communication explained CAPA’s behavior and supported them. The following two quotes illustrate:

The CAPA [that was involved in the double infanticide] is one of the best Child and Adult Protection Agencies we have [in Switzerland]. (Academic 1, coded as a positive statement)

One of the CAPA’s tasks is to become active when a child is in danger. Such a danger can arise from the parents’ behavior, for example, if they neglect their child or abuse it psychologically and physically. The CAPA most often become active due to a danger report that may stem from relatives, neighbors, caretakers or teachers. (Journalist 3, coded as a neutral statement)

Academics 1⁵ and 2 as well as journalists 1 to 3 meet the criteria of having provided reputational support. I selected them for interviews to gauge the motivations behind their evident reputational support. The two academics are seasoned scholars from the fields of social work and civil law. Both report manifold informal connections to CAPA employees due to their scientific work and teaching practices. Additionally, academic 1 participated in various expert commissions that advised the national administration in drafting the Law on Child and Adult Protection; that is, the CAPA’s legal basis. He also worked in a coordinating function between the CAPA’s organizational predecessors in the 1990s and early 2000s. Thus, based on the interview, the initial categorization in the media analysis of academic 1 as a non-stakeholder was revised: because of his in-depth participation in CAPA’s creation, he is a stakeholder of the agencies.

The three journalists work for daily quality newspapers and a weekly newspaper, respectively, and they all had considerable job experience at the time of the double infanticide. They all declared they had no ties with CAPA.

To conclude, the media analysis reveals that CAPA received reputational support exclusively during the main period of investigation—that is, at the time of the unmitigated reputational threat— and solely from journalists and academics. Interviews with CAPA employees and the CAPA instructor, however, show that they perceived a greater variety of individuals providing reputational support. Thus, the phenomenon of reputational support may appear in many different shapes and from variable sources.

Motivations for Providing Reputational Support

As mentioned in the introduction, the key to understanding a behavior is investigation of its motivations. Of the five interview respondents identified in the media analysis to have provided reputational support, academic 1 is the only stakeholder. This is an indication that his behavior may have been driven at least partially by egoism, with the motivation to defend an organization he had helped establish. Such a motivation indeed becomes apparent in the following quote, although it seems notable in this context that academic 1 stresses not to have uncritically supported the CAPA:

And I always, during all these appearances in [Swiss television programs] or wherever, I always also criticized when it was justified from my point of view, but with all my interventions I always also intended to support and defend the new law and organization, because I am still convinced that, even after seven years, that it was a good step we took. (Interview academic 1)

The other four interviewees are non-stakeholders, and Table 3 shows that no other egoistic motivations could be detected in the semi-structured interviews. The interview data do not indicate that a single motivation was present for all interviewees. Instead, complex constellations emerge that partly seem attributable to profession, but often crosscut the two professions in the data.

Table 3.

Stakeholder Category and Motivations of Individuals Providing Reputational Support.

	Academics		Journalists
Stakeholder / Motivations	1	2	1	2	3
Stakeholder?	X
Motivations
To clarify and explain: The CAPA system is appropriate	X	X	X	X
To provide counterarguments. . .
. . .against the public		X	X	X
. . .against the media			X		X
. . .against the Swiss People’s Party (SPP)		X		X
Facts and evidence support their position			X	X
Sentiments of irritation and annoyance			X	X
Professional duty		X	X
Confirms provision of reputational support	X	X			X

Note. Only motivations mentioned by at least two interviewees are featured in the included.

An often-mentioned motivation, evidenced by academic 1 as well as journalists 1 and 2, is that they disagree with the dominant judgment of the CAPA as malfunctioning at the time of the double infanticide. They believed the CAPA system is appropriate:

[The goal was] to say that the system of the CAPA is reasonable, despite the things that happened now and despite, probably, mistakes that happened. (Interview journalist 2)

Thus, many felt the need to explain the CAPA and to provide counterarguments to allegations against the CAPA. Those these arguments addressed varied, with some criticizing the Swiss People’s Party (SPP) as one of the main attackers during the outrage (academic 2, journalist 2) and others generally opposing what they perceived to be the public opinion at that time (academic 2, journalists 1 and 2). Journalists 1 and 3 also problematize the role of the media and want to counter-argue with the majority of published articles.

Furthermore, both a journalist and an academic referred to a professional duty to voice their estimation of what had happened. As academic 2 explains:

I believe it to be the task of the senior civil servant who is fed by the state to communicate what he does [. . .], you cannot render such a case understandable, but you can show that you scrutinize it. (Interview academic 2)

When referring to the four motivation types of prosocial behavior presented earlier (egoism, altruism, collectivism, and principlism), the motivations here can be categorized as principlism, the motivation to uphold a moral tenet. Among the respondents, principlism manifests mainly in the urge to restore the quality of debate in times of public outrage, but also in the conviction that some professions must voice their opinion in public debates.

Strikingly, collectivism, understood as the motivation to increase a group’s welfare (or, in this case: the CAPA’s welfare) is largely absent from the interview data. Although three of five interviewees agreed with a closed-ended question that they had aimed to support the CAPA with their statements, similar responses did not appear in previous open-ended answers concerning their motivations. Two journalists even denied that they had intended to support the CAPA, as is evidenced by the following quote:

What am I supposed to say? Supported the CAPA. It’s. . .if you look at this as a quasi, in quotation marks, friendly turn, then no. This is not it. Rather, it is really my factual conviction that this is right. (Interview journalist 1)

This indicates a limited relevance of this factor as a driving force.

Perception and Evaluation of Reputational Support

The interviews with CAPA employees and a CAPA instructor allow for a more refined estimation of reputational support from the recipient side. All interviewees except one had perceived such behavior and were able to provide examples. Apart from journalists and academics—the professions that appeared to provide reputational support in the media analysis, politicians, cultural celebrities, and members of CAPA’s target groups were mentioned. For instance, CAPA employee 2 mentioned a well-known writer from his region. Coming from a difficult famial background, the writer publicly stated on several occasions that he wished CAPA had existed and helped him when he had been a child. At multiple public events where both the CAPA employee and the writer participated as roundtable discussants, the latter defended the former against attacks. The CAPA employee judged this as “naturally (having) more weight than when one argues with legislation or statistics” (interview CAPA employee 2).

By contrast, CAPA employee 3 said she never perceived anybody standing up for the CAPA, which at times was “very disappointing” to her. CAPA employee 1 and the CAPA instructor supported this view in the sense that although they mentioned examples. they considered them to be exceptions.

If perceived at all, the evaluation of reputational support was exclusively positive. While the CAPA instructor thought it would help in public debates, the others highlighted the positive effects reputational support might have for CAPA employees themselves. As the CAPA rarely receive recognition for their work (CAPA employees 2 and 4), such positive public feedback is important for their self-esteem and self-image.

The factors noted earlier that can lead to negative evaluation of prosocial behavior did not seem to play a role here. The reason for this could lie in the context: if an organization is repeatedly criticized and attacked, statements counteracting this general tendency might appear in a more positive light.

Finally, although most interviewees were generally positive about the idea of reputational support, two CAPA employees were more critical. CAPA employee 3, who had not perceived any reputational support for the CAPA, claimed that such statements would be discounted quickly. Instead, she proposed a fictional format on television showing the CAPA’s work in specific cases, so the public would gain a greater understanding of CAPA’s mission and challenges. CAPA employee 4 also commented that reputational support might not have a big impact on public opinion. She emphasized instead that it mattered how the CAPA behaved in specific cases, that is, how sensitive and responsive they were to their target groups. In her opinion, this would have a more sustainable effect than reputational support.

Discussion

The discussion aims to provide a more refined conceptualization of reputational support, its antecedents, and its outcomes. Since this study was exploratory, the findings are leveraged in combination with what is known from existing research to contextualize reputational support and outline potential avenues for future research. The examination does not claim to be complete, but I hope that it will provide ample connection points for other scholars. Figure 1 provides an overview of the refined conceptualization of reputational support.

Figure 1.

Antecedents, characteristics, and outcomes of reputational support.

Antecedents of Reputational Support

What factors lead to reputational support? The investigation of individuals’ motivations to provide reputational support revealed principlism as a main motivation, with the exception of one individual, where an egoistic motivation also could be traced. For research on organizational reputation, the absence of collectivism as a motivation is most striking. If collectivism was not the primary motivation of reputational support, then a call for help or other actions from the organization that aim to elicit such behavior might not be very effective. Nonetheless, this inference should be treated with caution, as it could be case-specific.

For research on prosocial behavior, the case of reputational support for the CAPA serves as an indication that non-egoistic motivations for prosocial behavior exist. This becomes especially apparent when recalling the adverse circumstances of the media firestorm and the heated atmosphere, including death threats against the CAPA and individuals taking their side, in which the individuals provided reputational support. The case may serve as an example of principlism and allow further research on non-egoistic motivations to build upon.

As is visible in Figure 1, contextual factors were held constant in the study. It is conceivable that further factors affecting the emergence of reputational support might be found in context-specific characteristics. For example, does it make a difference when an organization’s tasks focus mainly on service delivery rather than sanctioning activities? How did the specific institutional and cultural context of Switzerland shape extent and nature of outrage and support? Would we have observed different behavior if the eliciting event had not been a double infanticide, but a corruption scandal? Research on organizational reputation (Boon et al., 2021; Maor, 2020) and public debates more generally (Stauffer, 2023) give first clues about the possible relevance of such factors. Additional investigations with a variety of cases in different contexts may provide further insights.

Characteristics of Reputational Support

The study investigated several attributes of the individuals providing reputational support. The media analysis uncovered journalists and academics, with other professions mentioned in the interviews with CAPA employees. The individuals providing reputational support were both stakeholders and non-stakeholders, with some with personal ties to the CAPA and others not. Thus, so far, no single attribute evidently is systematically related to reputational support.

Future research might dig deeper into the varieties of content one sees when individuals provide reputational support. For instance, are the motivation for and effect of providing reputational support through explanations of an organization different from reputational support signaled by statements promoting an organization? Do individuals providing reputational support strategically focus on specific reputational dimensions in their communication? Research on reputation management shows that organizations can strategically emphasize the technical, procedural, performative, or moral dimension of their reputation (Carpenter, 2010; Maor, 2016; Rimkutė, 2020b). Investigating whether this is also the case for external individuals providing reputational support or whether there are systematic differences between organizations and external individuals might be another avenue for exploration.

Furthermore, the forum within which reputational support is pronounced might constitute a relevant factor for better understanding the phenomenon. With its analysis of media coverage, the present study held the forum constant. News media,however, are not the only possible forum for reputational support: it might also be provided in parliamentary debates, in expert discussions, or on social media. These different fora also entail varying target audiences of reputational support, another possibly key factor. With research on organizational reputation having conducted initial studies on variations in reputation management according to different audiences (Boon et al., 2021; van der Veer, 2021), this might be another lever for gaining knowledge about reputational support.

Outcomes of Reputational Support

Turning to outcomes of reputational support, with only one exception all the individuals interviewed on the recipient side of reputational support perceived the phenomenon and evaluated it positively. Statements about a positive effect on CAPA employees’ self-esteem and self-image show that more systematic examination of the effect of reputational support on organizational identity might be fruitful. Although in this study the effect seemed to be exclusively positive, that need not always be the case; for example, the effect might vary depending on the attributes of individuals providing reputation support or on the relationship between the support provider and the recipient. As noted earlier, this is an aspect that is central to research on prosocial behavior. Hence, a triangulation of these three literature strands might be beneficial.

The study here leaves a central question in research on organizational reputation largely unanswered: the effect of reputational support on an organization’s reputation. The CAPA employees’ opinions were divided in this regard. Although some considered reputational support generally useful, others doubted it would have any effect on public perception and suggested other measures to address CAPA’s negative reputation. That the most-read tabloid newspaper dubbed the CAPA “Switzerland’s most-hated authority” (Dorer, 2017) two years after the infanticide seems to corroborate the limited effect hypothesis. Nonetheless, in 2017 and 2019 a regional and a national people’s initiative to abolish the CAPA both failed (Aschwanden, 2017; Steiger, 2019), which might indicate at least a partial recovery of the CAPA’s reputation. Additional research, especially comparing task areas or similar organizations in different countries, will be necessary to get a clearer grasp of the effects of reputational support.

Regarding research on prosocial behavior, the case of reputational support for the CAPA corroborates the argument made by Bolger and Amarel (2007), who cautioned that the perception of prosocial behavior should not be presumed as a given. As the study here shows, the individual engaging in prosocial behavior may be geographically—and even temporally—removed from the recipient, possibly concealing the act from the latter. Such distances also might contribute to a weakened effect of reputational support, —an expectation to be investigated in future research.

Finally, a research area emerging from this study concerns the effect of reputational support on trust. Public organizations depend on trust from different stakeholders to complete their mission, most crucially trust from their political principals and key target groups. Without trust from political principals, a public organization faces the risk of being terminated (Hinterleitner & Sager, 2019). Without trust from target groups, implementing a policy and achieving the desired outcome becomes an impossible task, especially in a field as sensitive as child and adult protection (Bouckaert, 2012; Tyler, 1990). Future research might investigate whether and how reputational support may act as a resource for creating and sustaining trust in political principals and target groups.

Conclusion

This article investigated the phenomenon of reputational support, the act of publicly explaining or promoting a public organization. The initial examination aimed at gauging the motivations behind this behavior and at grasping its perception and evaluation by organizational recipients. Reputational support for the CAPA in times of public outrage served as an extreme case; it was analyzed using a sequential mixed-methods design, employing media content analysis and semi-structured interviews.

Following a horrific double infanticide of children under CAPA’s protection, various individuals provided reputational support for CAPA. The media analysis showed that in the implementation tragedy’s immediate aftermath, mainly journalists and academics exhibited this behavior; interviews with CAPA employees revealed additional supporters in politics, culture, and CAPA’s target groups. Although interviews with the providers of reputational support suggested they were not primarily motivated by helping the CAPA but wanted to restore the quality of the debate and to establish an accurate appreciation of the CAPA system, the support had positive effects on the CAPA. The employees appreciated reputational support, as it helped them to maintain their self-esteem in times of heavy attack.

This study is relevant for researchers examining the reputation of public organizations and for public organizations themselves. For the latter, that they are not alone in defending their reputation constitutes a valuable new insight: individuals who are part of an organization’s audiences can provide reputational support in times of reputational threat. Reputational supporters may constitute a valuable resource, especially by bolstering employee morale. Highlighting examples of reputational support or inviting individuals who provided this support to internal events helps employees, especially if they are operating in difficult environments.

For research on reputation, the phenomenon of reputational support widens the perspective to include the behavior of unassociated individuals. Such behavior need not be a threat, and it may be useful.⁶ Investigating reputational support provides researchers with additional insights into the complex dynamics of public debates surrounding an organization’s reputation, and it shows how these dynamics impact an organization.

The potential of studying reputational support is far from exhausted. This initial investigation should be complemented by analyses in other contexts. Such studies might elaborate on the exact nature of reputational support, for example, by examining which reputational dimensions are referred to in what circumstances or by investigating whether reputational support appears in different degrees of intensity. Furthermore, additional data sources such as social media, parliamentary debates, or everyday conversations and conideration of other causal chains (e.g., which types of threats elicit reputational support, how reputational support affects organizational audiences) constitute valuable additions to our knowledge on organizational reputation.

As this article demonstrates, changing the perspective away from an organization’s behavior to behavior in its environment allows for the exploration of an array of new phenomena. Apart from deepening our knowledge of reputational support, future research should explore other types of behavior that might influence an organization’s reputation. A highly relevant one is the phenomenon of attacks on reputation. How are attacks launched and executed? What motivates individuals to attack an organization? When is an attack successful, and why? Investigating such areas will provide both scholars and practitioners with valuable insights.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-aas-10.1177_00953997231226329 – Supplemental material for When Outsiders Step In: Investigating the Phenomenon of Reputational Support

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-aas-10.1177_00953997231226329 for When Outsiders Step In: Investigating the Phenomenon of Reputational Support by Johanna Kuenzler in Administration & Society

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

My deepest thanks go to Fritz Sager for his useful advice and guidance throughout the last years. Further, I would like to thank Tobias Bach, Bettina Stauffer and the participants of the “IPW Research Seminar” at the University of Bern for their valuable inputs.

Data Availability Statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation [407640_177405].

ORCID iD

Johanna Kuenzler

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

Author Biography

Johanna Kuenzler (Ph.D.) is a Research Associate at the German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer. Her research focuses on narratives in the policy process and on political dynamics of policy implementation. In her work, she mainly applies two theoretical lenses: the Narrative Policy Framework and Bureaucratic Reputation Theory. Methodologically, Johanna Kuenzler mainly applies qualitative approaches such as content analysis or semi-structured interviews. She is also versed in Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA).

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