Conference Agenda

Many state-owned corporations that were previously operating in perceived legitimate industries and as core parts of the state are now increasingly viewed as controversial. These organizations are consistently confronted with systematic challenges to their reputation and legitimacy, and are increasingly required to extensively justify their existence, actions, and objectives. The reason for controversy varies but are generally because the services or conduct of the organizations may be viewed as sinful, immoral, or unethical based on cultural beliefs, values, and norms (Wilson and West, 1981).

This increased controversy of many public and private organizations seems to reflect global trends of heightened attention towards progressive social values relating to ethics, environmental sustainability, and human rights. However, many of these challenges have also “always” persisted for some public organizations to some extent as their missions are set at higher political-administrative levels (Wæraas and Byrkjeflot, 2012; Christensen and Lodge, 2018).

In this paper, we argue that these organizations manage their reputation in somewhat different ways than other public organizations. Organizations in controversial industries have different challenges compared to e.g., regulatory agencies (Bach et al., 2022), universities (Christensen and Gornitzka, 2017) and EU agencies (Busuioc and Rimkutė, 2020) where threats may arise, but audiences are not making moral judgements about the existence or the activities of the organization.

Utilizing a qualitative content analysis of over one hundred annual reports, this paper explores the different ways four state-owned corporations in Norway manage their reputation related to potentially morally controversial issues in the time period 2002-2023. We identify four reputation approaches employed by these organizations: symbolic, translation, mitigation and procedural. We find significant variation between the studied state-owned corporations regarding which reputation approaches they embrace, explained by difference in organizational form and the nature of their moral controversial task. Contrary to expectations, we do not find more complex approaches over time, but rather refined approaches. Overall, the study contributes to expanding our understanding of reputation management to sectors and industries that deal with heightened attention towards moral issues.

Scholars have long asked about the role of news media in affecting citizen trust in state institutions. Going beyond studies that treat the content of media reporting as a black box, we assume that there are three distinct mechanisms: First, we posit that media exposure, meaning the extent to which newspapers report on political and administrative institutions and the degree to which individuals consume this news, matters. Second, we argue that exposure has a combined effect with the tone in which institutions are covered. Finally, we expect a difference in news media reporting between political, administrative and coercive institutions. Using data from a representative multi-wave panel study of 7,323 individuals, we link respondents’ news media consumption to their trust in political institutions. To measure news exposure and tone, we analyzed 1,780,422 newspaper paragraphs from five major German national newspapers using a novel large language model capable of classifying reporting on administrations and politics as positive, negative, or neutral. Our findings suggest that mere exposure to news media has only a short-term positive effect on citizens’ trust levels. However, the tone of reporting plays a critical role, whereby the strength and direction of the effect vary considerably depending on the institution being reported on. While reporting on politica parties does not appear to influence individuals’ trust levels, reporting on security actors, local administrations, and governing parties does show measurable effects. This suggests that institutional trust is not shaped by media exposure alone, but rather by how frequently and in what tone institutions are portrayed.

Trust in regulation and in the actors that define, implement, enforce and judge the regulation - what we call the regulatory regime - is crucial. Regulatees’ rule compliance depends on their level of trust and so does the uptake of services by beneficiaries, which is often put to the test due to high-impact events.

This paper lays the foundation to study how trust in three key dimensions—regulatory actors, regulatory content, and enforcement procedures—influences overall trust in regulatory regimes. Trust in regulatory regimes is critical for addressing contemporary challenges such as financial stability, data protection, and food safety, all of which require effective governance frameworks. Drawing on a cross- country, cross-sector survey conducted across nine countries and three regulatory domains (data protection, finance, and food safety), two critical questions are aimed to be explored: (1) How does trust in individual components of a regulatory regime contribute to overall regime trust? and (2) Do these effects vary across stakeholder groups, such as regulatees and public actors?

The paper develops a theoretical framework that conceptualizes trust as a mul3faceted construct and situates it within the broader context of regulatory regimes. Preliminary hypotheses are formulated to guide future empirical analysis, focusing on the poten3al hierarchical influence of trust components and variations across stakeholder groups. The study highlights the relevance of trust in shaping perceptions of legitimacy and the effectiveness of regulatory regimes, while emphasizing the importance of tailoring regulatory approaches to the distinct priorities of diverse stakeholders. By advancing these theoretical and empirical foundations, this paper aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of trust dynamics in governance systems, offering practical implications for policy design, stakeholder engagement, and the fostering of resilient regulatory regimes.