Boeing employees are striking for…more input into product safety. This labor action is a manifestation of lost reputation value. This labor action is a stark reminder that angry, disappointed employees are one of many expressions of a reputation crisis. Corporate leadership and governors must be mindful that that the long tail of reputation risk typically includes costly investor, regulator, and yes, employee actions.
Reputation risk arises from the failure to meet expectations. All too frequently, reputation risks arising from material operational problems known to insiders are dismissed by those in charge or authority. Nicknames can indicate an issue with ethics, innovation, safety, security, sustainability, and quality. “Junior doctors were referring to Lucy Letby as “Nurse Death” … two years before she was arrested. […] Letby, 34, was sentenced to 15 whole-life orders after she was convicted across two trials of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others.” Board members should note that there are many windows into human resource-based organizational risk.
At the end of reputation risks’ long tail are board-level consequences, exemplified by the denouement of this infamous winter 2022 crisis precipitated by software quality issues, unaddressed. “Southwest Airlines on Tuesday announced an overhaul of its board of directors, including the planned departure of its executive chairman, Gary Kelly, after a meeting with a hedge fund that has called for sweeping changes at the company.” The takeaway: reputation risk management is always a vital governance issue.
Affirming in practice what it disclosed in January, Blackrock “engaged 2,683 times on strategy, purpose and financial resilience-related themes with 2,014 companies — more than any of its other engagement priorities — this proxy year. Given this information, board directors may want to prioritize financial resilience in their own work and in engagement with index funds.” Steel City Re can provide metrics and tools to support innovative strategies for strengthening financial resilience.
32.9% of companies, including American Airlines and US Bancorp, have compensation clawback policies for reputation harm.
Qantas Airways Ltd. docked A$9.3 million ($6.1 million) from former Chief Executive Officer Alan Joyce’s final payout and announced a governance overhaul after a review partly blamed board and management errors for the carrier’s reputational crisis. This punitive action conforms to heightened expectations this year by both institutional investors and proxy advisers that companies should be clawing back CEO compensation for both reputational damage and for failures in risk management, even if financials do not have to be restated. This should help focus board attention to the factors that increase, protect, and restore reputation value including reputation risk intelligence, risk management, and reputation value insurance (aka, Side R).
Manifestations of complex interconnected risks generally culminate in reputational crises, but they can be managed. Relying only on reporting systems when insiders may become aware of such risks…is not risk management. Reporting systems are unlikely to mitigate federal investigations and follow-on issues because today the risk/reward balance favors whistleblowing over internal reporting. In fact, the rewards of whistleblowing are so great right now that corporate swatting–calling the DoJ or SEC with a hot tip when there is no known issue just to see if something shakes looses–is no longer unthinkable.
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Major U.S. carrier Southwest Airlines is blaming Boeing for its woes. Equity returns 40%< airline index since Dec 2022. N'est-ce pas?
Boeing Proxy Advisers Split Boeing Proxy Advisers Split. Directors’ personal reputational value depends on how well they meet stakeholders’ expectations for contributing to institutional reputation resilience by dutifully overseeing thoughtful risk management over everything that is mission critical. Naturally, that personal reputation value sinks when influential third party proxy advisers imply that directors’ further contributions …