A Strategic Approach to Reputation Management and its Reflections on Sustainable Competitiveness

Due to the issues brought about by the current Information Age, such as rapid development of technology, easy and fast access to information, increases in international relations and global market perception, companies were compelled to seek for sustainable competitive advantage, and in this sense, the concept of "corporate reputation", which is powered by unique and original values of a corporation and which cannot be "imitated", has started to draw attention. In our day when markets are gradually reaching the point of saturation and consumers are getting the chance to evaluate more and more options, the efforts to create a convincing difference in minds have become prominent, and subsequently, reputation management has become an important field which a company needs to effectively manage. Corporate reputation management and the communication types the company will adopt in this sense have gained importance in all areas related to strategic management elements, from market positioning of products to shaping of intellectual perception maps. Corporate reputation management, wherein integrated marketing communication and public relation activities extremely important roles, needs to be strategically managed. Management of the concept of corporate reputation, which is a product of tangible and intangible corporate components, have transformed into a strategic requirement and become an field of its own as "corporate reputation management" within modern business administration. The fact that corporate reputation management, which has a relation with almost all activity fields of a company, is in contact with elements such as corporate social responsibility, management based on ethical principles, performance assessment studies in human resources management and the of phenomenon of governance, the recent agenda, which all affect the field of sustainable competition, indicates that this concept should be evaluated in terms of business management strategy