The reputation of non-governmental organisations: A scale development study for Turkey

Reputation is a study field which has been more important in academic literature since 1990s. Although the studies on reputation which have being mostly conducted through the companies, are being made in different disciplines such as economy, sociology and communication; the common question which should be answered is why and how some of the organizations come to the fore rather than the others. Even though this answer focuses on the marketing value of the companies and contribution of reputation to this value in economic discipline; the sociological perspective focuses on the social structure which is created by the relationship between the stakeholders and organizations and tries to explain the reputation as a positioning variable in the stratification of social system. The answer which the studies are conducted in the communication discipline search is which qualities of the organizations differentiate them from the other organizations and provide them to be prefered by the stakeholders and the role of the communication in this process. These "changeable and observable" qualities which make the organizations to come to the fore constitute the reputation. Therefore determining which qualities are important for the stakeholders is decisive in achieving the objectives of the organizations. Especially companies and the other organizations started to more care about measuring and managing their reputation. However the question about how the reputation should be measured has been tried to answer by the scales which have been developed by the researchers from different schools. These scales have been developed mainly for the companies; the reputation of public organizations and non-governmental organizations have been tried to answer just in a few studies. Non-governmental organizations are the organizations which are differentiated from the companies and public instituations with their structures, functions and missions. Therefore the criterions which shape the perception of the stakeholders related to these organizations differentiate from the other organizations. This study aims to determine that under which criteria the reputation of the non-governmental organizations active in Turkey are perceived by the stakeholders and to develope a scale for reputation of NGO. First of all an extensive literature review has been conducted to reveal which criteria determine the reputation of the NGO. In the next phase the question of which other criteria could be added to these criteria has been answered by using semi-structure interview. In the third phase which of these criteria measure the reputation of NGO have been revealed by subjecting exploratory factor analysis to the data obtained from the survey. Accordingly the reputation of the non-governmental organizations active in Turkey have a four-dimensional structure consisting of 26 variables. Keywords: Reputation, Civil Society Organizations, Reputation Research