The Recovery of Government Reputation: Exploring Two Dimensions of Strategy

The opportunity to enhance the reputation of local government is an emerging philosophy, primarily driven by the current egovernment agenda, to transform governments into efficient, effective, customer-centric and innovative organisations. It can be argued that those authorities that successfully embed this change will attract new business and employment, increase loyalty, pull in more tax revenue and increase their reputation; a virtuous circle. Given the relative newness of government reputation theory, government leaders have lacked suitable strategies and techniques to apply in their organisations. As part of a UK national programme, sponsored by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, a study was undertaken of successful, leading local authorities. The study established that government leaders should put together a reputation strategy of two interwoven dimensions. An initial dimension is an over-arching strategy that enhances reputation externally, whilst a customer-centric initiative enhances reputation for residing citizens and businesses.