Introduction

With the growing influence of stakeholders, their ever increasing roles, strength and significance, experts predict that trust and reputation will become the most tradeable assets of organizations in the years ahead.

This explains why no organization should adopt a passive approach to its external relations and reputation management functions. External Relations management must be geared towards establishing strong relationship with external stakeholders of an organization with a view to winning understanding and support of the activities and issues arising in the course of the organization’s operations. Reputation involves a collective representation of stakeholders’ opinions, an aggregate evaluation of an organization’s past and current behavior and a holistic impression of a company overtime, based on its performance and the ability to deliver on the brand promise and other valued outcomes to its multiple stakeholders; hence it has been aptly described as ‘a promise made and a promise kept overtime’

External relations and reputation management provides an organization with the opportunity to transmit and manage favorable aspects of its image and values by identifying opportunities and risks critical to an organization. The ability to actively monitor, analyze and adapt to both internal and external issues not only impacts the reputation of every organization positively, but ultimately boosts the success of such organizations. Organizations need to develop capacities for managing critical external relations that capture the peculiarities and specificities of those relationships as a way of enhancing their competitive edge in a dynamic business climate.