What is the most objective – relevant method for measuring – assessing a businesses favorable reputation…is it reasonable to believe most businesses – companies achieve – lose a favorable reputation in the context of cycles, which may include functionality, value, resilience, etc., or they eventually – inevitably merely succumb to a significant (materialized) reputation risk.

And if so, does recouping – recovering a favorable (business) reputation…also manifest in some cyclical context, i.e., period of time, what, how, and if resources were devoted to (reputation) recovery, what (acts, behaviors, deeds, risks, etc.) precipitated the down turn in reputation?

….which may be variously related to its products, services, organizational culture, leadership personalities, economics, public speech, or myriad of other factors – variables.

One current and perhaps relevant example, has to do with…the Sackler family and their founding ownership – leadership of Purdue Pharma. The allegations at this point, among other things, is that this pharmaceutical company’s leadership has, for many years, been aware of the adverse and addictive features of certain ‘pain killers’ they developed, produced, and sold massive quantities of OxyContin.

And, the revelation now of, at best dubious…perhaps incriminating, emails originating at the highest levels of company leadership suggesting not only awareness of the medicines’ addictiveness, but disregarded same and produced, sold, and dispensed even larger quantities.

So, is experiencing significant, perhaps lethal, reputation risk…merely a construct of time, perhaps generational, until certain circumstances and leadership behaviors inevitably converge to wholly undermine – bring into question, a company’s reputation?

In this instance…very serious, costly, and perhaps irreversible harm Purdue Pharma is now facing and will likely play out in courthouses throughout the U.S. and probably internationally.

Here, Purdue Pharma, thus far anyway…appears to be standing alone with their reputation risk ‘hat in hand’, unlike the tobacco companies in the 1980’s in which their reputation risk was publicly shared. No single tobacco company, at least in public memory, was characterized as being proportionately more despicable than another. I am inclined to believe, this was a ‘strategy by design’, i.e., share, and share alike in reputation risk’!

Michael D. Moberly, February 6, 2019 St. Louis [email protected] the ‘Business Intangible Asset Blog’ since May 2006, 650+ published posts, ‘where one’s attention span, businesses intangible assets, and solutions converge’!

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