| dc.description.abstract | The higher education sector (HES) in South Africa has been faced with two-plus decades of transformation in an attempt to redress the social injustices of the country’s past (Webbstock & Fisher, 2016:18; Teferra & Altbach, 2004:29). South Africa attempted to use education to correct these inequalities (Mzangwa, 2019:2). In addition, corporate reputations worldwide have been affected by new trends such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the 4th industrial revolution, which have created a new type of stakeholder (Xu et al., 2018:2941). Collectively, developments such as these have created a need for universities to ensure effective corporate communication strategies, especially corporate reputation management. The study conducted a literature review regarding corporate reputation. Here, the concept of corporate communication was first investigated. Thereafter, the literature review analysed corporate reputation in terms of its definition, stakeholder relations, the trends that affect it, its elements, its management, its measurement, and the advantages that a strong corporate reputation can yield.
A contextual study on the North-West University (NWU) was also conducted. This showed that the NWU, in particular, had undergone a substantial transformation over the past two decades. This included the iconic merger in 2004 of a historically white university, the Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education (PU CHE), with two historically black universities, namely the University of the North West and the Sebokeng Campus of the Vista University (NWU, 2015a:3; Pretorius, 2017:18). The NWU was a university comprising of three campuses situated in Potchefstroom, Mahikeng and Vanderbijlpark. Each campus retained its own culture, identity, language, and academic niche areas. Each campus was also run by its own management structures, although governed at an institutional level by the NWU Institutional Office, which was separate from and higher than each campus (NWU, 2015a:4). However, the NWU was faced with transformation again in 2014 when the Council on Higher Education (CHE) called for further transformation within the South African HES and the NWU responded with a new strategy characterised by the shift from a federal to a unitary model, a lengthy restructuring process and an alignment process of academic programmes (Pretorius, 2017:130). These processes were to result in a more unitary university (NWU, 2017:1). The latter brought with it various challenges for the NWU, including negative reactions from key NWU stakeholders (Pretorius, 2017:142). One key stakeholder group identified by this study as being sensitive to, and impacted by these changes, are staff members. Staff are key stakeholders who have a direct effect on the organisation at hand’s corporate reputation (Matuleviciene & Stravinskiene, 2015:78). That being said, the perceptions that staff have of the NWU are therefore important. To study these perceptions, this study makes use of (1) a literature review regarding the concept of corporate reputation and the management and measurement thereof, (2) semi-structured interviews with
the four members of the NWU Corporate Relations and Marketing (CRM) department’s management, and (3) an online survey developed using RepTrak™ that was distributed to NWU staff.
The interviews’ findings suggested that while NWU CRM management had a sufficient understanding of corporate reputation management, there was room to improve their understanding. These findings also questioned whether the NWU had a formal corporate reputation management strategy in place. The survey found that the NWU had an average corporate reputation in the eyes of its employees, and it was recommended that the university should strive to improve this perception.
The study furthermore provided insight into why the university’s corporate reputation was perceived as being average and provided recommendations to the university to aid in improving its corporate reputation specifically in terms of its staff members. | en_US |
