Examining the stakeholder perceptions of Erciyes University regarding corporate reputation

The purpose of this study is to determine the perceptions of Erciyes University stakeholders regarding corporate reputation and whether there is a significant difference in the level of reputation they perceive. This research was performed in survey method. For this purpose, following the literature review, the scale developed by Çillioğlu (2010), which is considered to be appropriate to the research objectives was used the measuring tool consists of two parts. The first part consists of a personal information form for participants; the second part forms a sixty-four item scale in which management and leadership, employees, workplace, corporate culture, products and services, social responsibility dimensions are included. The research population consists of 2,251 academic staff, 2,749 administrative and other employees and 54,997 students as internal stakeholders of the university. The external stakeholders, who were decided after an interview with the departments of administrative and financial affairs and the strategy development presidency, which comprise of representatives from different institutions, agencies and NGOs who are directly relalted to the university. As internal stakeholders, the research sample includes students (N=419), academic staff (N=320), administrative staff and other employees (N=344); as external stakeholders, public institution authorities (N=7), officials from local governments (N=13), NGO managers (N=9), officials from Central Anatolia Development Agency (ORAN) (N=9), directors from Kayseri Chamber of Commerce (N=12), employees from other universities (N=23), employees from media organisations (N=7) and other employees (N=31). Data was collected from a total of 1,194 participants, of which 1,083 are internal stakeholders and 111 are external stakeholders. The analysis of the data collected in the research was carried out using R 3.2.0 open source software. As regards to the research sub-problems, internal and external stakeholders of Erciyes University have "neutral" opinions on reputation concerning the university with the score of 3.31 which is slightly below the accepted threshold. Moreover, it was determined that the internal and external stakeholders had significant differences among themselves and within each group according to various demographic characteristics. According to the participants' opinions regarding the university reputation, while the workplace environment was regarded as the only dimension with the highest average; the social responsibility was accepted as the dimension with the lowest average. This was followed by the management and leadership, products and services dimensions respectively. It was determined that there is positively a strong correlation between the dimensions. The highest relationship is considered between social responsibility and product and service (.76). The lowest one is between workplace and employees dimensions (.68). In other words, regarding the corporate reputation of Erciyes University, it was perceived that the workplace environment as the highest reputation area, and the social responsibility as the lowest.