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‘Only as good as your last gig?’: an exploratory case study of reputational risk management amongst self-employed musicians

‘Only as good as your last gig?’: an exploratory case study of reputational risk management amongst self-employed musicians
‘Only as good as your last gig?’: an exploratory case study of reputational risk management amongst self-employed musicians
Reputations can take years to build and moments to lose, with significant impacts on the longer-term viability of an organisation. There has been a significant increase in literature on reputation risk and its management in recent times, although this has essentially focused on larger corporations. At the other end of the scale, in microenterprises, there appears to be very little coverage. To start to address this gap, this study provides insights into perceptions of reputational risk and reputational risk management (RRM) practice in the music industry. It explores how reputational risk is understood in an unconventional, non-corporate context using a case study of 11 self-employed musicians operating in the South of England, UK.

Respondents identified ‘competition’ as being the key risk that they faced, along with insufficient funding, unregulated contracts and protecting intellectual property rights. They did not though, at first, view their reputation in terms of risk. There was no consensus on the definitions of reputation or risk, yet there was awareness that two components determined reputation: musical ability and personal qualities. Despite appearing to have a lack of knowledge and understanding of RRM, the musicians were able to identify strategies for managing reputation, such as: behavioural adaptations, working with agents, choice of venues, use of technology, working collaboratively (with links to social identity) and being constantly reliable. They were also able to identify their stakeholders and the factors influencing their reputation, but this information was not widely used in a strategic way to routinely monitor or manage reputation. An identified ‘barrier’ to RRM was the lack of understanding of this complex issue.

Having explored perceptions of reputation and RRM in micro-enterprises, this work forms a platform upon which the next stage of actually (re)designing processes and systems specifically for managing RRM in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises can be built
1366-9877
483-504
Portman-Smith, C.
1be09a2a-03c9-4be3-bf1b-a956b5cdedbb
Harwood, I.A.
8f945742-3e33-445e-9665-0f613f35fc5b
Portman-Smith, C.
1be09a2a-03c9-4be3-bf1b-a956b5cdedbb
Harwood, I.A.
8f945742-3e33-445e-9665-0f613f35fc5b

Portman-Smith, C. and Harwood, I.A. (2015) ‘Only as good as your last gig?’: an exploratory case study of reputational risk management amongst self-employed musicians. Journal of Risk Research, 18 (4), 483-504. (doi:10.1080/13669877.2014.910679).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Reputations can take years to build and moments to lose, with significant impacts on the longer-term viability of an organisation. There has been a significant increase in literature on reputation risk and its management in recent times, although this has essentially focused on larger corporations. At the other end of the scale, in microenterprises, there appears to be very little coverage. To start to address this gap, this study provides insights into perceptions of reputational risk and reputational risk management (RRM) practice in the music industry. It explores how reputational risk is understood in an unconventional, non-corporate context using a case study of 11 self-employed musicians operating in the South of England, UK.

Respondents identified ‘competition’ as being the key risk that they faced, along with insufficient funding, unregulated contracts and protecting intellectual property rights. They did not though, at first, view their reputation in terms of risk. There was no consensus on the definitions of reputation or risk, yet there was awareness that two components determined reputation: musical ability and personal qualities. Despite appearing to have a lack of knowledge and understanding of RRM, the musicians were able to identify strategies for managing reputation, such as: behavioural adaptations, working with agents, choice of venues, use of technology, working collaboratively (with links to social identity) and being constantly reliable. They were also able to identify their stakeholders and the factors influencing their reputation, but this information was not widely used in a strategic way to routinely monitor or manage reputation. An identified ‘barrier’ to RRM was the lack of understanding of this complex issue.

Having explored perceptions of reputation and RRM in micro-enterprises, this work forms a platform upon which the next stage of actually (re)designing processes and systems specifically for managing RRM in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises can be built

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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 22 February 2014
e-pub ahead of print date: 8 May 2014
Published date: 2015
Organisations: Southampton Business School

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 362418
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/362418
ISSN: 1366-9877
PURE UUID: eef5eb72-ab9c-49d9-a8df-069b32404085
ORCID for I.A. Harwood: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-8647-2169

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Date deposited: 24 Feb 2014 11:53
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:08

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Contributors

Author: C. Portman-Smith
Author: I.A. Harwood ORCID iD

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