Assessing Sandline International’s reputation as a private military company

Employed by states, Private Military Companies (PMCs) are paid to support, fight alongside, or fight instead of a state’s armed forces. The reputation of PMCs as a whole, and of an individual PMC, will influence to what extent they are used, what they are used for and which companies are given the most lucrative contracts. Using a definition of reputation from the scholarship on corporate reputation, this article assesses Sandline International, a British PMC active during the late 1990s and early 2000s. It uses Sandline’s two most controversial operations: those in Sierra Leone and Papua New Guinea. As the most well-known of the company’s contracts, using these provides enough data to allow the article to identify this company’s reputation amongst its customers and amongst scholarly observers. The article finds that a range of factors influence and explain Sandline’s reputation, including known links to other companies, the company’s own efforts at managing its reputation, and – not always within its own control – the extent to which its contracts and its work are kept secret. Continued analysis of corporate reputation of PMCs is worthwhile given there are many controversies surrounding PMCs’ existence and use yet it is highly likely that they will continue to be used.