Leveraging Corporate Social Performance and Corporate Reputation for Strategic Brand Positioning

Contemporary public relations practice emphasizes solid image and reputation building anchored on truth, performance and actions that are well communicated. This notion is driven by the New Public Relations Practice Paradigm (NPRPP) which is holistic, eclectic, and interdisciplinary in approach. The NPRPP takes an inward-outward view of organizational behaviour that describes the firm as a set of relations with different stakeholders. This has translated into a widening of both concepts: reputation to corporate reputation (CP), and corporate social responsibility to include the evaluation of the firm’s relations with its entire stakeholder. The theoretical enlargement of the two perspectives, of course, has implied a redesigning of empirical analysis. Similarly, due to the new direction in the study of public relations (NPRPP), CSP models have changed with the multiple redefinitions and reinterpretation of corporate responsibility in response to historical evolution, economic and political transformation, and even changes in the conceptual perspectives of the theory of the firm. Based on the foregoing, this paper examined how a firm can leverage values of corporate social performance (CSP) and corporate reputation (CR) for strategic brand positioning and management. The paper evolved a deepened theoretical framework on reputation management as a core public relations function. A proposal is made on how firm’s can utilize reputational assets and past behaviour of the firm in positioning their brands in the minds of the stakeholders.