Reputation management in the Salvation Army in Australia : a multi-stakeholder analysis

This work provides an insight into how reputation is managed by The Salvation Army across multiple stakeholder groups. These stakeholders include the media, government, donors, volunteers, and clients - groups with differing needs, wants, and desires. The thesis constructs an argument that The Salvation Army in Australia manages its reputation simultaneously across these stakeholder groups through the management of narrative. In this instance, narrative become a key tool of communication, but also serves to frame the understanding of external stakeholders. Using a strategy of deconstruction (Boje, 2001), the thesis argues that the constructed Salvation Army narrative serves as a reputational barrier for the organisation in that it acts as a mirror to avert the gaze of external stakeholders. It is argued that The Salvation Army works under the intersecting gaze of a panopticon of government, donors, media, volunteers, and clients. In this panopticon, stakeholders have the power to discipline The Salvation Army through causing damage to their reputation should Salvation Army practices fall outside societal norms. However, the narrative mirror serves as a reputational barrier for The Salvation Army by reflecting the gaze of external stakeholders. Key messages and themes in the narrative frame Salvationists as kind and caring purveyors of the truth, and serve to sell constituencies with a central propaganda that they need the Salvos in order to have a functioning welfare system. Thus, the narrative of The Salvation Army as constructed in this thesis is powerful in that it manages the meaning of external stakeholders so that they construct a positive reputation for The Salvation Army.