It was not until Jollibee began winning regional and international awards for excellent performance that Jollibee, and Tony Tan Caktiong, started to acquire the kind of  reputation that it has now—a world-class Filipino firm that has transcended its humble beginnings and growing pains, through quality products, highly effective organization that respects and unstintingly serves its customers.  Until it raised its voice above langhap-sarap and harnessed all its positive values, little victories, and its long struggle for leadership-- and being Filipino-- in one long  sustained  drive, it  would have stayed a big successful company,  but without a vivid story,  a   unique character, and a  strong reputation.

A corporation wins respect via excellence in its main business--product and service, but that is just the starting point. A corporation has to keep on enhancing its reputation.  There are a number of ways I can see a corporation doing it.

1. Excel in corporate governance. The demands on business and on its readiness to obey the laws of the land willingly --without need for government or stakeholders to seek legal enforcement of its obligations-- are growing daily. Government, stockholders, the community,  NGOs and media will be even more aggressive in seeing to it  that a  corporation operate according to law, and to the satisfaction of those who have stake in it.  A corporation cannot build a reputation on shallow foundations.

2. Keep helping others--your community, society and the country, but be more imaginative,  be more long-term in vision, planning and resource-allocation in choosing your projects. Seek now to  build  alliances with other corporations and organizations to address the real big needs of the country, with  larger funds and resources, and more judicious planning. Reapply perhaps the PBSP model, which  highlights  the advantage of size created by a strong alliance and the benefits of diverse but disciplined work.

3. Teach others by example. Show other corporations   how you have done well in your main business and what you are doing  to fulfill your corporate social responsibility. Which is a  way of saying-- use judicious and good-taste PR to share with others your experience in business and in CSR.  This may  earn you good copy and awards as you go along, but these should be welcome, for these will give you  the kind of authority that you will need to keep multiplying the results  of your experience.

4. Strengthen  the concept of reputation as a part of your culture. Teach  your people the value of good reputation as a good thing in itself but also as an imperative. Good reputation--the kind that is  won over a long time by exemplary work-- multiplies the business and helps assure you of  a loyal market. Reputation, which is another name for pangalan  or karangalan,  is a most precious asset. Live as nobly, i.e., according to the high standards of your business and those of fair play and social responsibility,  as you can, to inculcate the ideal of good reputation. Over time, your organization will get to understand that  good reputation is part of the engine that will give you continued strength, growth and enduring viability.

 Charles J. Fombrun (Realizing Value from the Corporate Image) sees a competitive advantage in the asset called reputation: “A company with a large reputational capital actually gains a competitive advantage against rivals because its reputation enables it to charge premium prices for its products, to achieve lower marketing costs, and to benefit from greater freedom in decision making. In other words, reputation building is a form of ‘enlightened self-interest.’ "

That is all true, but I see even something else. A corporation with a good reputation wields something that its products may not be able to give it all the time:  a defense against being maligned or against baseless accusations. Jollibee, in its early years, used to be bugged by complaints on quality of its products; now, could anyone imagine  that Jollibee does not have the discipline, the resources, or experience, to ensure that all the product it offers are of good, even, excellent quality?

 We maintain reputation, first by being true to what we have won it for in the first place:  giving our best   as an  organization, offering our best product or service   day in, day out even to the point, if need be, of sacrifice, walang patawad. Companies with reputation are rich with stories of the extra-mile, of employees going beyond the call of duty in fulfilling commitments to customers.   Betraying one or two customers with poor service may be forgivable, but deliberate neglect, dishonesty, chicanery are fatal to one’s reputation, and to his business.

Then, we chart out a reputation management program. What you put in it depends on who you are, your product or service, or your vision.  Your end- objective will be to keep your corporation worthy of the trust, patronage and respect of all your constituencies. Enlist the voice and prestige of the CEO to communicate the vision of the corporation and get him to marshal the entire organization to keep this vision alive through a program --a facile, not frenetic kind of program - of corporate presentations.   Awards per se, for instance, do not mean much; they had better be given by organizations that themselves have the know-how and the prestige that make the awards believable and inspiring. Quantity of exposure went out of fashion a long time ago, but especially in reputation management.  Exposure has to be relevant, thoughtful and targeted.

Pay priority attention to ethical conduct. A corporation has no valid and credible vision without commitment to ethics. There is no reputation to be built in a corporation that is not animated by vision and is not tempered and held in place by ethical conduct. Commitment to what is good, right, lawful and proper must suffuse the entire organization.  Some of the saddest chapters in U.S, business, for instance, have been written in the last ten years or so--those on the downfall of corporate leaders who were misled and did mislead others, who, dazzled by huge amounts of ill-gotten money, threw away reputation, theirs and their employers. Would that such stories could not happen in the local scene.

 The corporation has to be zealous in defending itself against attacks on its reputation. A free society often makes the corporation helpless against unfounded attacks.   The CEO must be primed up to come to the defense of the corporation and never hope that it will be immune to attack.   His mode of defense must be measured, reasoned, and clear, but fast.   Knowledge of issues management, regional and global relationships, meaningful corporate social responsibility and commitment to ethics and positive values   will help enhance and defend corporate reputation.