THE ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPT OF REPUTATION MANAGEMENT IN BUSINESS MANAGEMENT THEORY

Abstract

The article examines the genesis and development of the concept of reputation management within the theory of enterprise management. It is substantiated that the transformation of scientific views on reputation reflects the evolution of approaches to enterprise management and the changing role of intangible assets in ensuring the competitiveness of business entities. It is established that reputation has undergone a long process of development from an institution of trust between participants in economic relations to a strategic resource and an independent object of management. The main stages in the evolution of scientific approaches to understanding reputation are revealed, and the peculiarities of the formation of the concepts of corporate reputation, branding, stakeholder theory, and the resource-based view of the firm are characterized. It is established that the current stage in the development of reputation management is characterized by atransition from managing individual communication processes to comprehensive trust management in the context of the digital economy, the expansion of network communications, and increasing requirements for corporate social responsibility. It is proven that reputation is formed at the intersection of marketing, strategic, resource-based, institutional, and stakeholder factors, which determines its interdisciplinary nature. An authorial approach to the interpretation of reputation management is proposed as a process of strategically reproducing an enterprise’s reputational capital, grounded in stakeholder trust management and aimed at  transforming reputation from a social characteristic of a business entity into a source of economic value and long-term competitive advantages. This provides grounds to consider reputation management not as a separatearea of marketing communications, but as a higher level of development in marketing management aimed at transforming trust into reputational capital, thereby ensuring the sustainability of competitive advantages and the long-term efficiency of the enterprise. It is evident that reputation management should be considered the highest level of marketing management development, focused on the formation of sustainable competitive advantages and the long-term effectiveness of enterprise performance.