The 18 Immutable Laws of Corporate Reputation: Creating, Protecting & Repairing Your Most Valuable Asset Paperback – 3 March 2006

Alsop is a senior reporter for the Wall Street Journal and I have read many of his stories over the years. I am glad that someone of his caliber has addressed the issue of corporate reputaion at a time when big business ranks about equal to politicians in public perception. Even the mafia is thought to be less sleazy!!Alsop starts with a basic, uncontestable premise: A corporation's reputation is one of its most valuable assets. This determines how much slack a cynical public will cut it when things start to go wrong. Other assets - such as those that show up on the balance sheet - are carefully measured, tracked and managed. Reputations are not. Not even by so-called excellently managed companies.Next Alsop lays out various 'laws' to help a company manage its reputation. The first two just talk about how important it is and how important it is to measure it. Then he becomes much more interesting as he starts laying out what a company should do build and maintain a sterling reputation.He stresses how important it is for a company to 'live' its values and ethics and why being defensive is actually offensive. These could be bromides. What gives them value are Alsop's anecdotes drawn from a lifetime of reporting on business. These well selected stories not only illustrate his points, they also show the reader how to implement his ideas in their own situation. And there are hundreds os such stories.For example, Alsop talks about how being socially responsible can be an important component of a sterling reputation. And he relates how Timberland does it with a range of initiatives from monitoring labor practices at its contractors' overseas factories to giving its employess the opportunity to do community service on company time. And he doesn't stop there. He tells what dozens of other companies do from Johnson & Johnson to Paul Newman's food company.These stories and examples are, by far, the best part of the book. This is where the value resides and it is not at all difficult to take each of these examples and suitably modify it to use in your situation.An excellent book. My one quibble is a philosophical one. I think Alsop is too easy on companies like Altria - the former Phillip Morris. Does having an exemplary ethics code with lots of employee input compensate for the fact that its core product kills when used as intended? You make up your mind on that one. Alsop shows how Altria does a lot of things right in terms of global cultural sensitivity but I would simply not have used such an example.

This book is worth reading just to get a sense of the way the American public views business today. The stories of businesses told in this book are one-sided and even irrational, but without a doubt, they reflect the way American business is seen by the public right now.The problem with the book is that it offers very few ideas on how a business can successfully navigate today's minefield of public perception. As a reader hoping to come away with ideas on how to nurture the public's perception of my business, I instead finished the book feeling that businesses are largely at the mercy of dumb luck and circumstance when it comes to perception. Further, the author admits that businesses are in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation when attempting to let the public know about any acts of goodwill.This book is well-timed to take advantage of today's anti-business climate, but not of much help for those seeking to find their way through it.