Jon Harmon writes in an interesting commentary about the HP pretexting scandal (I recommend reading his whole post), in which he recommends a post of Chief Reputational Officer (CRO):

Postscript: Mark my words. Five years from now, the office of CRO will be commonplace among global corporations. And ten years from now, the CRO will vie with the CFO as the most likely path to the office of CEO. Reputation is a corporation’s most valuable capital asset and those who manage it best will be rewarded handsomely.

Empty Seat at the Table Devastating in HP Debacle Jon Harmon, Force for Good, 10 December 2006.

On the one hand, I get a bit of reflex reaction to that suggestion, of “is this just more perception over content, of which we already have too much in the corporate world?”

But when I think about it for a moment, it’s along the same lines as what I’ve been harping on in this blog for years, that companies need to be aware that when they try to manipulate perceptions by suppressing information about their actions, that backfire is a very likely result. The problem doesn’t have to reach Enron scale before it’s a problem. Apparently many CEOs apparently could use somebody to nudge their elbow when they’re making such decisions and say, “Are you nuts?!!”

If reputation is an asset, then it’s good risk management to manage reputation.

-jsq