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Article

LINKING RISK AND REPUTATION: A RESEARCH AGENDA AND METHODOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

Beth Kewell
The York Management School, The University of York, York, UK
Correspondence: Beth Kewell, Lecturer in Public Sector Management, The York Management School, Department of Public Sector Management, The York Management School, Block A, Sally Baldwin Buildings, Heslington Campus, The University of York, YorkY010 SDD, UK. E-mail: bk503@york.ac.uk

Abstract
The risk literature has long since acknowledged that reputation represents a significant factor in the social construction ofperceptions of risk, safety and danger. However, this important phenomenon is seldom investigated on a stand alone basis. This paper maps out various avenues through which reputation can be integrated into risk research. It considers why this research is necessary and identifies some hybrid strategies for the future investigation of links between risk and reputation.

Keywords
reputation; risk; methodology

Risk Management (2007) 9, 238-254. doi:10.1057/palgrave.rm.8250029

Introduction

eputation and risk are inseparable social institutions, yet research that examines the relationship between them remains fairly thin on the ground. In some recent cases, notably the Bristol Royal Infirmary tragedy, sometimes referred to as the "BRI disaster", false assumptions about reputation have masked dangerous realities. In response to these developments, this paper sets out an agenda for exploring the interplay between risk and reputation.

Risk Management 2007,9, (238-254) 2007 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1460-3799/07 $30.00 www.palgrave-journals.com/rm

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239 The BRI case acts a point of resonance for the discussion. The BRI was the only teaching hospital in the southwest of England to be awarded "centre of excellence" status for paediatric surgical work in the mid-1980s (Panel of the Bristol Inquiry, 2001; Weick and Sutcliffe, 2003). While there are many facets to the tragedy, key stakeholders in the events that unfolded there, including parents and carers, linked the award of "centre of excellence" status with safety and being "risk averse" (Panel of the Bristol Inquiry, 2001). It was assumed that risk, safety and excellence went together. It can therefore be argued that a powerful "reputation effect" (Bromley, 1993) emerged in the context of the Bristol affair (Kewell, 2006). At the final tally, the Bristol tragedy resulted in the deaths of 34 infant paediatric cardiac patients (Aylin eta/., 2001; Panel of the Bristol Inquiry, 2001 ). This incident suggests that reputation effects, which have long since been viewed as virtuous phenomena (Bromley, 1993), can act as cloaking devices for the incubation of major hazards and crisis incidents. In certain contexts, reputation effects can encourage actors to believe that their organizations are invulnerable and impregnable. Reputation effects arguably contributed to the Challenger Disaster (Starbuck and Milliken, 1988; Maier, 2002) and the more recent scandal at ENRON in 2001 (Michaelson, 2005), although the reputational aspects of these well-known disasters remain relatively unexplored. Reputation, this paper argues, has powerful institutionalizing qualities that can keep shareholders, and stakeholders, for example the general public, voters, investors, or policy-makers, thinking a private organization or public institution is trustworthy, risk averse and safe when the reality may be to the contrary. Perhaps the most iconic example of a pathological reputation effect is that of the sinking of the Titanic, the myths surrounding its construction and the unswerving belief held by many at the time in its infallibility as a sea-going vessel. Wliife this may seem to be an extreme example of a reputation effect, such processes of mystification operate in myriad settings and contexts and contribute to our formation of conceptions of safety, hazard, risk and resilience in numerous ways (Bromley 1993; see also Kewell, 2006). Public relations efforts, the media, published league tables and diffusion effects all clearly play roles in keeping institutionalized reputations and reputational myths alive (ibid.). They also help to reinforce images and perceptions of reputation through time and space. Fundamentally, reputation represents a socially constructed phenomenon (Granovetter, 1985; Bromley, 1993; Kewell, 2006). However, relatively little is known about the relationship between the construction of reputations and the construction of perceptions of risk. Pivotally, this paper asks questions about this relationship. How do reputations, and their effects, influence risk construction? How do they mitigate notions of threat, danger, safety, resilience and reliability?
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With these questions borne in mind, the aim of this paper is to (1) set out three approaches linking reputation and risk and (2) suggest methods for the further investigation of reputation and risk construction in social and organizational settings. The first approach involves qualitative and quantitative forms of embeddedness research, which are already strongly associated with the study of reputation and risk (Granovetter, 1985; Raub and Weesie, 1990). The second approach builds upon this work, but focuses more readily upon stakeholders in organizations and the power relationships between them (Freeman (1984) cited in Fombrun and Shanley, 1990; Mitchell et a/., 1997; Rindova et a!., 2005). This field of research considers how the collective actions and sensemaking of stakeholder groups can contribute to the social construction of perceptions of a focal organization to which they all relate (ibid.). Knowledge of reputation is used by stakeholders to assess such an entity's value, trustworthiness, and ethics, at a given moment in time; the risks, as well as the opportunities and threats it represents; the quality of the products and services it provides; and the organization's general level of efficacy (Granovetter, 1985; Wieglet and Camerer, 1988; Fombrun and Shanley, 1990; Raub and Weesie, 1990; Rao, 1994; Rindova eta!., 2005). Fombrun and Shanley (1990) and Rindova eta!. (2005) are two examples of stakeholder research with a focus upon reputation and esteem. It is argued that this form of research could be fruitfully adapted to the study of risk. The third approach explored within the paper is language-based, and uses discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995; Wooffitt, 2005) to explore the social construction of risk and reputation (Granovetter, 1985; Bromley, 1993 ). This third avenue explores the discursive foundations of risk construction, through, for example, research that investigates talk within micro-contexts, such as the social actor network, and considers the interplay therein of reputation and risk. Discursively framed approaches include the study of organizational rhetoric, and the impact of "language games" upon stakeholder perceptions and actor and organizational relations (see, e.g. Wittgenstein, 1953; Astley and Zammuto, 1992). Options for the development of future research into risk and reputation are considered within the paper, along with the paradigmatic challenges they raise.
Why reputation matters in risk analysis

Reputations bring influence to bear upon numerous social situations, particularly those in which actors form judgements, or where they are required to make decisions (Bromley, 1993). These judgements can be about the esteem or qualities ascribed to a particular object or individual, or group of social actors; the trustworthiness and reliability of a local hospital or opportunities for investment; co-worker performance; the efficacy of a medical treatment; the
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241 quality of school education or brand of consumer goods; or whether an event or place lived up to its expectations (ibid.). Human decisions and actions therefore tend to be precipitated by exposure to, and interaction with, "reputational knowledge" (see, principally, Granovetter, 1985; Bromley, 1993). Once created, a reputation represents a set of assumptions, ideas, beliefs and images that describe the standing or esteem of a given object, person, social group, product, organization, city and so on (Bromley, 1993). The processes by which reputations come into being are largely discursive and based on the exchange of images, impressions, gossip, hearsay and descriptions of experience between social actors (ibid.). Micro-processes are central to the growth and dissemination of reputations within social actor networks and across social and organizational fields (Granovetter, 1985; Bromley, 1993). Competing and contrasting views of a given reputational object, for example, a large-scale organization, may come to pass within a field, or multiple fields, if relevant. Overtime, these perceptions either bed down, and become taken-for-granted, and thus continually reproduced, or fade with time, until a point at which they disappear altogether or are resurrected by a change in events or circumstances (ibid.). The Bristol disaster, was for example, marked by the emergence of two contrasting sets of beliefs about reputation among medical practitioners (Panel of the Bristol Inquiry, 2001; Kewell, 2006). One set of beliefs cast infant paediatric cardiac surgery in a favourable light, and suggested that the performance of Bristol's paediatric surgical team was in keeping with normal expectations of a "centre of excellence" (Aylin eta/., 2001; Panel of the Bristol Inquiry, 2001; Kewell 2006). However, an alternative view emerged, as new doctors and surgeons were recruited to the hospital from other centres of excellence in Britain and overseas, circa 1988-1994 (ibid.). These "new entrant" specialists recognized that performance levels were dangerously outside of the ranges experienced at other centres of excellence in the specialty. Critically, these "new entrants" to the BRI were able to see both the dangers that their time-served colleagues could not (Weick and Sutcliffe, 2003); and begin a process of breaking down a localized reputation effect (Kewell, 2006). The case illustrates, therefore, how perceptions of repute, prominence and esteem, can differ vastly between sets of social actors. It also stresses the dangers inherent to reputation effects. Reputations represent intangible assets, particularly for large-scale organizations, which invest heavily in impression management and marketing, but also for individuals, such as medical professionals, acting out their roles in everyday life (Bromley, 1993 ). Reputation cognizance- a state in which we are aware of reputation and its effects - is intrinsic to human "sensemaking" (Weick, 1995) and arguably shapes most of our encounters in the social world (Bromley, 1993). As a social institution, or mechanism by which behaviours are regulated, often through self-monitoring (Phillips et a/., 2004); reputation creates

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innumerable rules that go on to frame behaviour (Granovetter, 1985; Raub and Weesie, 1990). This applies in particular to economic behaviour, which involve patterns of exchange, and reciprocity which are in themselves, facilitated by trust (ibid.). Reputation acts as the bedrock for trust relations, and exchange and reciprocity between social actors, and in doing so, provides legitimacy for action (Rao, 1994). Trust, in turn, produces socially accepted norms of behaviour, and helps regulate against open use of practices thought to be deviant, disloyal, malfeasant or unethical by the community of actors concerned (Granovetter, 1985). Reputation also contributes to the ethical regulation of human behaviour, therefore, via, among other forces, trust; and by creating archetypes - exalted, good, indifferent, bad and doubtful reputations, that people either aspire to or fear (Bromley, 1993). In doing so, reputation acts a form of power as well as a social lever that institutionalizes perceptions and imagery of a given reputational object. In the BRI case, conflicting perceptions of reputation were used by both new and established medical personnel to push forward personal agendas. Reputational impressions and images also figured predominantly in the rhetorical battles that played out between them (Kewell, 2006). The power dimension to reputation is recognized in sociology, particularly within Bourdieu's work, where it is seen as a form of capital that enables social actors to accrue economic, social and symbolic leverage within fields of social, cultural, political, and economic production and regulation (Jenkins, 1992; Bourdieu, 1998). Reputation is, as Bromley (1993) points out, a continuous presence within the social processes that contribute to the creation of everyday cultural norms, rules and practices; as well as institutions and controls on behaviour; power relations; and archetypes and individual mindsets. As a consequence, reputational cognizance is implicit to human behaviour, and therefore something we enact as second nature. Most importantly perhaps, it is implicit to the "mental models" and scripts social actors use to devise and work through actions in everyday life (Zucker, 1991; Barley and Tolbert, 1997). Reputation is arguably as central to the construction of social risk, as it is to the social construction of other patterns of human relations, such as those encountered in economic exchange (Granovetter, 1985; Raub and Weesie, 1990). "Risk construction", as an act, involves the assembly of ideas, assumptions, feelings, images, impressions, and knowledge of dangers, hazards, customs and rules into mental models, or interpretive schemas that help determine the need for, and risks associated with, rational, and also possibly irrational forms of action (Lupton, 1999a, b; Tierney, 1999; McDonald et al., 2005). As such, risk construction, formed largely by the exchange of discourse about dangers, hazards and probabilities between social actors, represents an embedded process in which trust and repute play their parts (Granovetter, 1985;
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243 Raub and Weesie, 1990; Bromley 1993). For example, in the BRI case, "talk" about reputation figured predominantly. Stories and gossip were exchanged in ways that contributed to the development of conflicting reputation effects, and with this, the battles between medical specialists that were to define the tragedy (Panel of the Bristol Inquiry, 2001; Kewell, 2006). The repeated circulation and exchange of such narratives and hearsay, and facts and myths, helped to embed and then institutionalize the reputation effects implicated in the crisis. For a sense of risk to be socially constructed, therefore, reputations and trust relations must already be in place in some form. What social actors come to know and believe about a person, thing, organization, place or event that pre-empts their perception of an object, and the risks and opportunities it represents. Reputation will help determine whether it becomes a feared, loathed, attractive, safe or dangerous proposition (Kewell, 2006). This thinking then sets the stage for action, or possibly inaction, depending upon the context. Sensemaking of a risk, and the hazard it potentially represents, will not only differ, therefore, from person to person, and from socio-cultural context to socio-cultural context, but also from social actor network to social actor network (Granovetter, 1985). Pivotally, each social actor will develop a culturally and socially conditioned mindset regarding the risks they face, or may possibly orchestrate, in their everyday social life; their dealings with large-scale organizations; and how they view themselves as "stakeholders" of those organizations. At a broader level, reputation is constituent to the wider cultural reification of risks (Lupton, 1999a). These processes were again evident in Bristol. Witnesses to the judicial public enquiry that followed the disaster (c.1998-2001), gave vivid accounts of the many individual, collective and organizational actions that took place at the hospital and its parent "National Health Service (NHS) Trust" .1 Their testimony demonstrates that reputation effects travelled far and wide within the hospital, and even found their way into the upper echelons of the NHS's "civil service" administrative structure, where they became a fixture (Panel of the Bristol Inquiry, 2001; Kewell, 2006). Notably, the civil service decided not to intervene early on in the tragedy, even though multiple warning signals had been received (ibid.). As the enquiry unfolded, it became evident that NHS civil servants had made this judgement partly as the result of a reputation effect: Bristol was not a star performer, but it had been awarded excellence status, and could, therefore, be assumed to be safe (Panel of the Bristol Inquiry, 2001; Kewell, 2006). Further to this, the many structural links and overlaps that exist between risk and reputation are well-illustrated in the extract from Bromley (1993, p 5), shown below. While his objective is to discuss the "public image" of marijuana, he draws our attention to the way in which reputation helps to construct notions of risk held by those involved in its use, misuse, and policing:
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How do we distinguish between social representations (public images) that are regarded as "reputations" and those that are not so regarded? For example, can we say that marijuana has a reputation or a public image? It is certainly possible to compare marijuana with other drugs, and it has certain properties that are reasonably well known. People differ in their beliefs about it. To this extent it has a reputation. The reputation it has among the general public is, of course, likely to be different from the reputation it has among drug users, drug enforcement personnel and other "interest groups" involved in the drug user scene. In the passage illustrated above, reputation has a direct implication for cognizance of risk; it is used by those involved to assess hazards and dangers but also to assess its pleasures. The drug has a different symbolic significance for each group of actors. Notably, social actors form different perceptions of the drug, and the real and imagined risks it represents, depending upon their lifecourse, and exposure to habitus (Jenkins, 1992; Bourdieu, 1998) and the levels of personal resilience they have gained. Addicts will subsequently assess the risks of drug use based on a different appreciation of marijuana than that which might be constructed by enforcers. For the user, it has a positively ascribed reputation for yielding particular psychological and physical highs, the experience and repute of which outweighs the dangers, both real and hypothetical. Bromley (1993, p 5) continues: There are other entities about which the public form beliefs- babies, the Hubble Telescope, electricity privatization, suicide, recycled paper, and so on .... Statements about reputation usually make sense only if they refer to individual entities or to homogeneous subclasses sub-classes of entities rather than to large heterogeneous classes. Thus "Low birth-weight babies have the reputation of being more at risk than babies of normal weight" seems more acceptable than the statement about babies in general Reputation is, as this second quotation suggests, implicit to the social formation of concepts of risk, and notions of whom and what is at risk, and how these risks take form. This may be because, as Bromley argues, esteem is our greatest concern as individuals: it is the asset people (and organizations) fear loosing the most, and thus the most ubiquitous of social controls. Bourdieu, whose interest in matters of taste and esteem are well known, viewed repute as a subconscious lever of social control (see for instance, Jenkins, 1992; Bourdieu, 1998). In his conceptualization of the social "field", it represented a gravitational force, affecting both objective and symbolic human relations (ibid.). In different ways, Bromley and Bourdieu make a similar point: namely that reputation determines the value and status of a given object. These values help, in turn, to formulate conceptions of risk and resilience.
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245 Thus, a reputation arises when actors think up, and exchange views about, the esteem or standing of a given object, thing, person, group, community, organization, city, branch of government, industry, pastime or event (Bromley, 1993 ). It is intrinsic to the cultural and social construction of risk in myriad situations, contributing to the development of risk mindsets (Lupton, 1999a); and notions of rational action. It can be used "in-the-moment" to make sense of a social situation and assess its hazards and dangers. It can be used to refine and predict hypotheses of risk, as in, for example, the assessment of corporate worth and shareholder value provided by Fombrun and Shanley (1990); or the objectification of a drug such as marijuana (Bromley, 1993 ). More significantly perhaps, it also represents a form of social control, and a lever that enables power to be exercised. In the context of the BRI tragedy, those who subscribed to the belief that "excellent-means-safety" were also among the most powerful organizational actors in the hospital (i.e. the Trust's Chief Executive, Doctor John Roylance, and the BRI's principal paediatric cardiac surgeon, and Medical Director of the Trust, Mr James Wisheart- see, Panel of the Bristol Inquiry, 2001, Kewell, 2006). This sponsorship helped to reinforce and create legitimacy for a reputation effect that proved to be dangerous in the long run, the artifice of which took several years to breakdown.
Linking reputation and risk research

The discussion held thus far raises some important questions. How might, and why should, risk researchers investigate the relationship between risk and reputation in greater depth? How might such a body of research contribute to risk analysis? What social problems and situations might this apply to? What methods and approaches might it employ? The remainder of the paper puts forward three strategies for exploring these questions, including those based on (1) traditional embeddedness research methods, as exemplified by Raub and Weesie (1990); (2) stakeholder models and (3) discourse-based approaches.
Traditional embeddedness research

There are a number of studies of reputation, see for example, Raub and Weesie (1990), Montgomery (1998), Park (1999), Quinn (1998), Hanlon (2004), and Kallberg eta/. (2004 ), which draw either directly or indirectly from embeddedness research- a form of sociology that focuses upon human interactions within social actor networks, and in particular, the development therein of trust relations and cultural bonds (Granovetter, 1985). Of this body of work, Raub and Weesie provide the most interesting and relevant analysis for a risk audience. In a publication from 1990, Raub and Weesie develop a hypothesis that actor behaviour is both driven by, and altered by, exposure to reputational knowledge. To test this notion, they develop a
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game theoretic approach based on the Prisoner's Dilemma (see also Montgomery, 1998), in which it is assumed that:
the actor anticipates that his current behavior will affect not only the immediate consequences he will face in the actual situation but also the later behaviour of his partner(s) and, thus his own future consequences, that he has an incentive for the trade-off between the short-run effects of present decisions and their long run effects on reputation. This trade-off can significantly affect the actor's behavior" (Raub and Weesie, 1990, p 629).

Reputation is seen within their model as central to human decision-making, and, with this, human cognition and analysis of risk. Reputation, it is contended, acts as counterweight to natural "individual opportunism" (ibid.), and encourages social actors to adopt collaborative mindsets that help to counteract risk. Raub and Weesie (1990) proceed to model risk trade-offs between actors in scenarios where the level of reputational knowledge is at variance- in other words, contrasting situations of "imperfect information". Their findings suggest that an actor's behaviour, decision-making, and ergo, their approach to risk taking, changes according to their level of exposure to reputation knowledge. This exposure is, in turn, dependent upon the degree of embeddedness or proximity actors share; and the bonds and quality of information that flows between them. Taken in the round, their findings raise interesting implications for our understanding of the social construction of risk, which appears to be deep-rooted in, and defined by, actor-network relationships, whether close, or distant, informal or formal. The nature of the relationship that actors enjoy, their closeness, for example, will determine the type and quality of reputational information that actors choose to disclose (Bromley, 1993). Thus, while "Company A" may have a good general reputation for safety, there may be networks of actors connected with that firm, who are in receipt of information that counteracts this reputational image. Leakage of this information beyond the scope of the actor-network will be determined by how bonded its participants are. While mathematically complex, Raub and Weesie's model, based on game theory, demonstrated in its time that it would be possible to predict, measure and evaluate reputation effects using relatively small populations of actors. Arguably, their model remains resonant. It could be used, for example, to identify the ways in which small groups of social actors use reputational knowledge to (1) make decisions about the safety, as well as the trustworthiness, of a given risk object, for instance, an organization and the services it provides or (2) the way social actors in networks come to view a risk object and develop shared forms of reflexivity and resilience towards it. Their model could also be used to predict the likely knock-on consequences yielded by these decisions. The key factor in such assessments would be the proximity or embeddedness
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247 of actors within networks; and the availability and quality of reputational information they are in receipt of. Such an approach would generate advantages in a number of risk-related specialisms, for example, research in the area of risk and public health, on an issue such as drug use or resilience to the threat of specific diseases and epidemics like HIVIAIDS or SARS. Applications for this method could also be found in the study of risk and criminology (Jackson, 2006), and risk and attitudes to dangerous technologies.
The stakeholder approach

Stakeholder and "resource-based" models of reputation tend to be specific to large-scale organizations, located within well-defined networks of stakeholders, for example, suppliers, customers, employees, shareholders, government and the media (Freeman (1984) cited in Mitchell et al., 1997). Reputation is regarded as a crucial "intangible asset" within these models (Sutton and Callahan, 1987; Rao, 1994; Deephouse, 2000; Rindova et al., 2005). In the most recent of these examples, Rindova et al. (2005, p 1034) refer back to embeddedness theory, but also drawn upon what they see as a value-focused approach preferred in economics that "emphasizes the perceived quality dimension of organizational reputation". Stakeholder and resource-based approaches attempt to bring together insights from economic and social perspectives, like embeddedness theory (Granovetter, 1985). There are, according to Rindova et al.'s analysis, two ways in which reputational knowledge can effect actor cognizance- by providing them with knowledge of an organization's status, reliability and prominence; and the value of the products and services it provides or its "attributes". Organizations control the presentation of these attributes, but "prominence is influenced by the choices that influential third parties, such as institutional intermediaries and high-status actors make vis-a-vis organizations" (Rindova et al., 2005, p 1034). In their analysis, reputation is seen as diminishing "the uncertainty stakeholders face in evaluating firms as potential suppliers of needed products and services" (ibid.). As in Bourdieu's concept of the field, actors with power, and crucially, access to stakeholder audiences, tend to influence the choices made by stakeholders, helping to frame their attitudes and mindsets towards a given risk object (in this context, an organization). The mass media is often used as a vehicle to disseminate such information and imagery (Sutton and Callahan, 1987; Deephouse, 2000). Stakeholders are seen as party to the creation of an organizational reputation (ibid.), and in some circumstances, it is undoing. The power relationships that develop between different groups of stakeholders and an organization are encapsulated by Mitchell et al. (1997). Their analysis shows that entities, such as a large corporation, tend to view some stakeholders as more powerful than others; and approach each with a differentiated risk strategy (see also Rao, 1994).
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In some circumstances, however, such as the case of the Franklin mint vs the Diana Memorial Fund, an undervalued stakeholder (the Franklin Mint) can become a major threat to survival. While eventually settled out of court, the dispute between the two organizations, over use of copyright, proved to be severely damaging for both parties. However, the worst effects of the debacle were borne by the Memorial fund's beneficiaries in the developing world. 2 Organizations can also become highly complacent about their stakeholders and engage in Group Think (Janis, 1972), see for example, Weick and Sutcliffe (2003) analysis of the BRI tragedy, in which they identify "tunnel-vision" as a major factor in the case. A methodology for exploring cognizance of risk and reputation among stakeholders could therefore involve a combination of statistical analyses (i.e. economic and industrial data, published league table and performance data; archive work and interviewing, see Sutton and Callahan, 1987); or pure statistical work (Fombrun and Shanley, 1990) or surveys of stakeholder opinion (Rindova et al., 2005). The aim of the latter approach would be to consider how knowledge of reputation differs between stakeholder groups, and what impact this has upon their individual and/or collective sensemaking (Weick, 1995). Cultural and situation factors could be taken into account. This form of research might also serve as a platform for the analysis of resilience, particularly in a situation of organizational failure and disaster resolution. In such a situation, it would focus on capturing similarities and differences in the interpretation of events, and the risk they represented, between stakeholder groups. Did one group of stakeholders see disaster approach before the rest? How did they cope with the disaster, and how did it come to affect their sensemaking of risk thereafter?
Alternatives to stakeholder analysis

David Wicks (2001) provides an alternative method for researching similar sets of stakeholder interactions, using the notion of the Institutionalized Organizational Field (IOF), first developed by Meyer and Rowan (1977), to study a Canadian mining disaster. An IOF consists of an alignment of organizations that develop similar traits in tandem, adopting similar technologies, and developing similar cultures and practices over time. They are considered to be mutually institutionalized. Dysfunctional and dangerous behaviours develop within the context of IOF norms, and can lead, if unchecked, to the destabilization of the entire field (Wicks, 2001). The IOF approach focuses on the transmission processes that enable institutions present within the field to filter into organizations, and then finally to their constituent stakeholders. The IOF model makes it plausible for researchers to examine the diffusion of institutions from macro- to micro level, primarily using case study methodology, and then consider how they create socially constructed notions of risk, myopias and vulnerabilities (ibid.). !OF-focused
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249 research of this kind would also illuminate the part played by reputation in the normalization of field institutions, and with this, assumptions held their in about risk. However, to work effectively, this method needs to be deployed on a comparative basis, by for example, using multiple cases study research sites involving several companies operating in the same IOF.
Discursive approaches

Alongside these strategies, there may be distinct possibilities for discoursebased research, using the embeddedness approach as a starting point. This type of research would look at a network of actors, either at micro- or institutional level, and the development of "reputational texts" within them. These texts could be evaluated using Discourse Analysis (Silverman, 1993; Fairclough, 1995; Wooffitt, 2005) or, if they are represented as a large sample, as with company documents, Content Analysis (CA) (see Silverman, 1993). Conversations between actors, might well be analysed from patterns that indicate (1) the way reputational knowledge is institutionalized through language and (2) how these institutions are integrated into mental models and cognizance of risk. An equally legitimate case can be made for research that explores the role reputation plays in the language games promoted by managers and organizational professionals, and their stakeholders (Mauws and Phillips, 1995). Reputation forms part of the arsenal of weaponry managers and other political actors draw upon when engaging in struggles for the control of agendas and resources (Oakes eta/., 1998). Its influence is brought to bear most effectively in situations where organizational actors, particularly but not exclusively managers, seek to "create legitimation" for foregoing plans and proposals and/or reinforce their controls over decision-making (ibid.). Arguably, it is through such control mechanisms that "empowered" actors gain mastery of organizational sensemaking, and with this, what organizational members come to believe are acceptable and unacceptable risks. This process of arresting, and sometime re-arresting control (ibid.), often takes place through rhetorical means, within which managers present to their respective stakeholders, perceived threats to reputation, or alternatively, possibilities for reputational enhancement. Such images and narratives can be very powerful forms of propaganda (Phillips et a/., 2004) that aim, and often succeed in creating sustained and persuasive support for the managerial prerogative (Oakes eta/., 1998). Potentially painful, and drawn-out, change agendas such as the introduction of performance measures can thus be introduced and "naturalized" with less resistance, on the back of reputational maximums, imagery, narratives and mythologies. Rhetorical processes such as these can also change the way risk is viewed. These processes are evidenced, once again, by the Bristol case. As the disaster unfolded, a reputation effect in which safety was equated with excellence, was replaced by one of "excellence-maskingfailure". The task of rebuilding the hospital's reputation, and introducing
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change both within the BRI, its parent "Trust" organization, and in the wider NHS (Panel of the Bristol Inquiry, 2001), became much easier once this new rhetoric had been accepted (Kewell, 2006).

Paradigmatic challenges
Risk construction has been explored through highly contrasting ontological lenses (Lupton, 1999a; Tierney, 1999; Adam et a/., 2000). While this has brought great diversity to thinking within the field, it has also created a burden. Lupton (1999a), for example, concludes that each stratum within the risk paradigm represents a different, and potentially incommensurable, conversation about the same subject. Risk analysis can increasingly be seen, therefore, as a series of epistemological language games (Deetz, 1996). Reputational analysis, on the other hand, represents a more consensus-driven field at present, which has yet to experience significant paradigmatic changes, although they are there to be made. The options for risk and reputation research described in this discussion mostly represent either extensions of embeddedness theory or methods that use it as a platform, see for illustration Wicks's (2001) IOF model, which recognizes the importance of embeddedness, and the discourse approaches this paper has outlined, which look at the communication of reputational knowledge. This means that although they focus on different things, they share a similar ontology, of research predicated on the study of the relationships between actors in networks and social and organizational fields. They represent different, but potentially complementary, ways of investigating risk and reputation, which share embeddedness as a common touchstone. All of the examples given so far would therefore fit within the notion of "weak constructionism" as extolled by Lupton (1999a, p 35). Methodologically, they can be investigated using normative social science methodologies, such as questionnaires, interviews, mathematical modelling, triangulation, secondary research and so on.

The application of approaches 1-3 to the study of organizational disasters

Could approaches 1-3 be applied to the study of disasters? If so, what advantages might they yield? Evidence from the BRI tragedy seems to suggest that reputation has a role in mitigating organizational disasters (Kewell, 2006). In this scenario, different groups of social actors subscribed to contrasting views of the reputation of the BRI's paediatric cardiac service, and ergo, its safety record (ibid.). It seemed to influence their perceptions of risk, and awareness of danger. The question occurs as to how such perceptions might be constructed, and how did reputation influence their formation? Could power relations
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251 between stakeholders help to explain why they interpreted issues of safety, risk and repute in different ways? The application of Approach 1 would enable the study of this phenomenon among small clusters of social actors connected with this particular event or another major tragedy or crisis. Game theoretic techniques would help to explain the role reputation played in formulating social actors' reactions to the disaster and handling of the risks it raised. What reputational information passed between them? How accurate was it? How did access to this information influence their decision-making? How did it influence their assessment of its risks? What might have happened if different reputational information had been available to them? Under the auspices of the second approach, a more detailed account of stakeholder perceptions might be refined, using qualitative and quantitative methods. This research might consider how power relations between stakeholders affected the onset of a particular tragedy or crisis event, or how their perceptions of the organization in question differed before and after the disaster. In a similar vein, the IOF method could be applied retrospectively, to a particular event or incident, in the manner of Wicks (2001). This would, ideally, produce a comparative analysis of organizational and actor behaviour, and concomitant attitudes to risk present before and after the event had taken place. Approach 3, would shed light upon the discursive foundations of reputation and risk constructions, using methods such as Discourse Analysis and CA (Wooffitt, 2005; Silverman, 1993). This would help to reveal the manner in which reputational knowledge and risk constructions were formed, transmitted and legitimated between actors; and the effects these exchanges had upon the unfolding disaster. Such a study might also consider power relations, the influences wrought by prominent high-status actors, and issues of manipulation, dominance, hegemony and misrecognition (Bourdieu, 1998). Further to this, it is possible to argue the case for a combination of approaches- perhaps a triangulation of approaches 1-3 using the same population of actors, in which game theory, stakeholder and language-based approaches are applied sequentially.

Conclusion

The study of risk is primarily concerned with the control of hazards, and the tasks of creating frameworks of hazard prevention, and understanding human responses to risk (Lupton, 1999a). This has led, in recent times, to a growing literature that focuses upon the social construction of risk (ibid.). This paper has explored the relationship between risk construction and reputation. Reputation is a major factor in risk, particularly in organizational and managerial
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contexts. Further research is needed to establish the intricacies of this relationship using either one of the approaches suggested, or a hybrid combination of them. As this paper has highlighted, research of this ilk would be directly relevant to the study of risk and public health, and risk and criminology (Jackson, 2006), and organizational risk. However, as this paper has also shown, reputation and risk research is likely to be most relevant to the study of crises and disasters, and the role reputation plays in formulating (and mitigating) these unwelcome events.
Acknowledgements

I thank the journal's anonymous reviewers for their positive responses to an earlier draft of this manuscript. I am also indebted to my colleague at the University of York, Matthias Beck, for the help, enthusiasm, and support he provided while I prepared this manuscript for submission.
Notes
1 The United Bristol Health Trust, formed on 1 April 1991. The trust brought together local hospitals, including the BRI, under the umbrella of a single management body. See Panel of the Bristol Inquiry (2001). 2 BBC News, (2004). Diana's fund in legal settlement. Available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ uk/4000867.htm

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