Economics-and-finance

"The 18 Immutable Laws of Corporate Reputation" (18 Laws) draws an up-to-date roadmap for (1)establishing a good corporate reputation, (2)maintaining that reputation and (3)repairing a damaged corporate reputation. Starting with the premise that a good reputation is a corporation's most priceless asset, writer Ronald Alsop presents mini case-studies of "lessons learned" from the crises faced by companies and organizations such as Johnson & Johnson, Merrill Lynch, Philip Morris (Altria), and the Roman Catholic Church to explore the benefits of a good reputation, the consequences of a bad reputation and ways to protect good reputations and fix bad ones.

While sticking mostly to the main highways of stategy development and avoiding the gritty back roads of tactical decision making, 18 Laws provides important insights into key principles and strategies for building, maintaining, and fixing corporate reputations. Though it lacks turn-by-turn directions and employs clichés with surprising frequency, this well-researched, well-organized and clearly-written business book is a worthwhile addition to the personal, corporate or PR agency library. C-level executives and corporate communications professionals can benefit in perusing the 18 laws in preparation for the next inevitable corporate crisis or as a strategic reference manual for use as the crisis unfolds.

Alsop is a senior reporter for the Wall Street Journal and I have read many of his stories over the years. I am glad that someone of his caliber has addressed the issue of corporate reputaion at a time when big business ranks about equal to politicians in public perception. Even the mafia is thought to be less sleazy!!

Alsop starts with a basic, uncontestable premise: A corporation's reputation is one of its most valuable assets. This determines how much slack a cynical public will cut it when things start to go wrong. Other assets - such as those that show up on the balance sheet - are carefully measured, tracked and managed. Reputations are not. Not even by so-called excellently managed companies.

Next Alsop lays out various 'laws' to help a company manage its reputation. The first two just talk about how important it is and how important it is to measure it. Then he becomes much more interesting as he starts laying out what a company should do build and maintain a sterling reputation.

He stresses how important it is for a company to 'live' its values and ethics and why being defensive is actually offensive. These could be bromides. What gives them value are Alsop's anecdotes drawn from a lifetime of reporting on business. These well selected stories not only illustrate his points, they also show the reader how to implement his ideas in their own situation. And there are hundreds os such stories.

For example, Alsop talks about how being socially responsible can be an important component of a sterling reputation. And he relates how Timberland does it with a range of initiatives from monitoring labor practices at its contractors' overseas factories to giving its employess the opportunity to do community service on company time. And he doesn't stop there. He tells what dozens of other companies do from Johnson & Johnson to Paul Newman's food company.

These stories and examples are, by far, the best part of the book. This is where the value resides and it is not at all difficult to take each of these examples and suitably modify it to use in your situation.

An excellent book. My one quibble is a philosophical one. I think Alsop is too easy on companies like Altria - the former Phillip Morris. Does having an exemplary ethics code with lots of employee input compensate for the fact that its core product kills when used as intended? You make up your mind on that one. Alsop shows how Altria does a lot of things right in terms of global cultural sensitivity but I would simply not have used such an example.

I found this book highly readable, balanced and full of useful information. It should become a textbook for people in the communications field and for senior executives.

The book is structured so well, with the best practices of companies clearly explained. The author is feisty in his assessment of reputation blunders and shortcomings, but he always turns them into instructive lessons.

Mr. Alsop vividly illustrates each law with detailed examples. I especially enjoyed learning about companies' tactics for dealing with Internet rumors, Merrill Lynch's crisis-management strategies, and the inside story of Philip Morris's name change.

There are also many rankings of companies with the best and worst reputations. And the author has written entertaining short pieces for some of the chapters about famous corporate apologies, the IBM Hall of Shame, and a corporate name change quiz.

Given the state of corporate America's reputation, this book should have a long shelf life.

Originally published in 1959, Robert Bruce's "1877: Year of Violence" is a classic of sorts. Personally, I was drawn to this book because of its focus on that watershed year. Most undergraduate courses use 1877 as the explicit demarcation point between early and modern American history. Yet, I never quite understood why a plurality of professional historians had concluded that 1877 was the decisive inflection point in the history of our nation and hoped this book would shed some light on that issue.

In the main, this book deals with the rise of big business (railroads, in particular) and the subsequent emergence of unionism and ultimately labor violence. That larger story is told through the specific events of the summer of 1877, when railroad workers reacted widely and violently - although not concertedly - to a wave of pay reductions by the major eastern trunk lines. In essence, the railroad executives had formed a quasi "union of capital," whereby each major trunk line agreed to lower wages by 15% one at a time throughout the summer and not to issue any rate wars in the interim while roads were putting down the inevitable strikes and walk-outs.

The most shocking aspect of Bruce's narrative is the level of violence committed on both sides and the extremely precarious state of the nation at that time, both economically and politically. President Rutherford B. Hayes had come to office at the beginning of the year in a widely disputed election where he had secured a one electoral point victory over his Democratic challenger, New York Governor Samuel Tilden, but lost the popular vote and was ultimately declared the winner by an extra-governmental committee (sound familiar?). Moreover, the nation was just beginning to recover from the Panic of 1873, the worst economic contraction in American history to the time, while the South still smoldered from Civil War and was on the verge of all-out racial warfare as Reconstructionist policies were imposed from Washington. In short, the crisis facing the country was severe and it is a testament to the remarkable resilience of our republic that it survived such a widespread spasm of violence so shortly after a civil war, in the midst of extreme economic hardship, and under the leadership of a new, disputed and largely uninspiring chief executive.

Bruce's writing style is crisp and direct, as one might expect to find in a book written by an academic in the 1950s. He avoids the showy dramatization common in contemporary popular history, but also steers clear of the dry, didactic prose of "more professional" histories. Those seeking a light, inspiring book to breeze through will likely be disappointed; however, those interested in getting a better understanding of a crucial, yet mostly forgotten epoch of American history will be satisfied and rewarded.