Corporate Reputation:

Corporate Reputation:
Connecting Fantasies with Reality
March 2006 www.ipsos.com/ideas
How can corporations increase the concordance between
their projected image and the real one, thus strengthening the
corporation’s credibility at a time when brands suffer from
a legitimacy crisis? Ipsos measures corporations’ reputation
and image among their stakeholders: shareholders,
consumer-clients, media, and employees.
Building Stakeholder Relations See article page 3
by Stewart Lewis
What You Do Speaks So Loudly that I (Sometimes)
Cannot Hear What You Say See article page 4
by Edouard Lecerf
The Resiliency Concept See article page 5
by Darrell Bricker
Corporate Reputation with Consumer-Clients See article page 7
by Nando Pagnoncelli
Employees-Corporations:
Towards a Transactional Relationship? See article page 10
by Antoine Solom
How Institutional Investors Assess Companies See article page 12
by Roger Stubbs

2 Ipsos Ideas
When will Mothering Happen? By Jean-Marc Lech
A corporation is no different
from a body; that is, it is a set
of interdependent mechanisms.
A healthy corporate body has
rich and decisive shareholders,
efficient and motivated
employees, and satisfied and
loyal customers, but unfortunately
for businesses, this
healthy body only produces
benchmarks – the best of
everything, but also the most
inaccessible. Sad but true.
We have a mental representation
of business: shareholder
groups, employees, and customers.This
image develops,
and can sometimes build itself
up suddenly via a dialectic
connecting fantasy and reality.
And this image continually
(re)creates itself, and strays in
its recreation. And, if there are
surprises, the balance in the
corporate body becomes
unstable and incomplete.
The global financial situation,
the local political and social
climates, and the unfaithful
customers (who are neither
disappointed nor angry) make
benchmarking as imprecise as
long-term weather forecasting.
The uncertain management
of corporate meteorology
makes it necessary to carry out
precise analyses for each part
of the body, as if we could see
further away by looking more
closely.Trying to see the future
by looking close to home is
the stuff of mythology.
They are three myths: the
contract, the father, and mothering.The
four-way contract –
between the business, the shareholders,
the employees, and
the customers – is unlikely,
because the adjustment variables
brought on by crisis adulterate
it.The paternal dogma
– despite the father figure, and
despite the name of the Father
so dear to the Freud-Lacan
clique – is outdated, because
it has not anticipated the
challenge to its authority.
Therefore, since nothing is
immutable, the focus will be
on a new co-management
between the business and
its prerogatives.We call it
mothering.The filial trinity
of the business is co-produced
with risks, even when the
father and mother are
healthy… when the triplets
are born.
About Ipsos Ideas
Ipsos Ideas is published by Ipsos,
a leading global survey-based market
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Ipsos Ideas
Communications Department
35 rue du Val de Marne
75013 Paris cedex 13, France
Tel: +33 1 41 98 90 00
Fax: +33 1 41 98 90 50
Publisher
Jean-Marc Lech
Editorial Board Members
Jean-Marc Lech • Stewart Lewis
Edouard Lecerf • Darrell Bricker
Nando Pagnoncelli • Antoine Solom
Roger Stubbs
Editorial Team
Dan Maceluch • Catherine Roussiès
Charlotte Vigne • Erin Williams
Marketing
Elen Alexov • Darcy Ulmer
Production
Roland Clifford
© 2006, Ipsos. All rights reserved.
Past publications:
July 2005:
“Loyalty: Myths and Realities about Desire”
January 2005:
“Krisis: The New Qualitative Approach
from Ipsos”
November 2004:
“Secure the Success of Your Brands”
October 2004:
“The Faces of Political Seduction”
February 2004:
“The New Era of Customer Relationships”
September 2003:
“Opinions of the War, and the War
of Opinions”
May 2003:
“Advertising: Money Down the Drain?”
Jean-Marc Lech is Co-President of Ipsos and has worked alongside Didier Truchot since 1982. A specialist in the public opinion field, he
started his career in 1970 with IFOP (Institut Français d’Opinion Publique), of which he was made Chairman and Managing Director in 1980.
He has published a number of works relating to French society and politics, the most recent of which was entitled Une société sans mercis (2006).
Contact: jean-marc.lech@ipsos.com.

Building Stakeholder Relations By Stewart Lewis
Reputation is like the weather – it exists, irrespective of whether we measure it.
It dictates what activities and goals are feasible, and how we should clothe and
present ourselves in order to be credible and healthy. It is sensible to check the
weather before we venture out, and even more useful if we know how it is
changing. So it is with reputation.The key difference between the weather and
reputation is that while we cannot control the weather, we can manage our
reputation. And there is a clear case for managing it.
For the private sector, reputation is a
business asset with bottom-line implications:
the trust (or distrust) of stakeholders makes
business easier (or more difficult), more
satisfying (or more frustrating), and more
profitable (or more costly). For public
sector organisations, reputation is a critical
determinant of credibility, acceptance,
and success.
Our aim is straightforward: to help clients
build stronger relationships with the people
who matter to them.That means providing
practical and well-informed guidance; for
instance, identifying the key drivers of reputation,
the credible and powerful messages
for each individual client, and the points in
the chain of influence where they can most
effectively intervene.
Core factors
To help us think about the mechanics of
reputation, we can start with core factors
within a company’s control: its behaviour,
values, strategy, and communications.
All these factors are pivotal to reputation –
and there must be alignment and consistency
between them – but behaviour is the
rightful starting point. However slick a
company’s communications, it will sustain
a strong reputation only if its actions stand
up to scrutiny. Having said that, communications
are vital. Many of the key factors
by which stakeholders now judge companies
– such as corporate responsibility – require
company investment to communicate.
It’s a balance to strike: Advertising is worth
doing when you’ve done something
worth advertising. These core reputation
factors do not exist in isolation, but are
surrounded by a mantle of issues.
Issues
Issues are more akin to a swirling cloud,
constantly emerging and disappearing
again, only to reappear in modified form.
Twenty years ago, an oil company could
establish a leading reputation and trust on
the basis of the message “We’re big and
successful”; such a message would win few
hearts and minds in 2006.The past decade
has seen dramatic growth in interest in
the company behind the brand, demanding
fundamental shifts in strategy on the part
of organisations such as Unilever and
Procter & Gamble.
Stakeholders
Ipsos Ideas
Surrounding the issues and the organisation
revolve its key stakeholders: customers,
investors, legislators, business partners, media,
lobby groups, employees, and so on.
The interests and expectations of different
audiences are sometimes in conflict,
requiring the organisation to strike a
balance in priorities and communication.
More frequently, they are in unison, as
in the priority attached to integrity and
honesty, particularly following the collapse
of Enron and other corporate scandals.
The orbits of different audiences often
intersect – a point not sufficiently recognised
in much of the debate (and research) on
reputation. Analysis and insight into these
interactions and the chain of influence
they create add depth and practical value
to our advice.
Tailored advice is central to our approach.
There are some widely-recognised trends in
reputation, such as the growing expectations
of corporate responsibility, but how does
this translate into specific opportunities and
Continued…
3

4 Ipsos Ideas
Building Stakeholder Relations
threats for a particular company? A number
of factors determine the answer, including
the issues associated with the sector(s) in
which a company operates, the positioning
of competitors, and, critically, the company’s
own reputation strength and character –
its corporate resiliency, as described in the
article following by Darrell Bricker.
It is rare that reputation can usefully be
condensed into a single indicator. Norms
and perspective are helpful though.The
same absolute rating on two dimensions
can represent outstanding performance on
one but disastrous weakness on another;
a strong level of advocacy in one sector
can be uncompetitive in another.
Reputation research can – and should – do
much more than deliver figures. It should
help your organisation engage the goodwill
of stakeholder groups by answering these
kinds of questions:
• How soft or resilient is the equity in
your company’s reputation?
• What messages will enhance
stakeholders’commitment to you?
• What are the opportunities and barriers
for getting your messages across?
Reputation has never been more important
to companies, and never more vulnerable.
Many stakeholder audiences feel that companies
are not meeting their expectations;
how can your company convince stakeholders
that it is the exception? How can
it achieve the status of one of our clients,
about which a senior government respondent
said,“I am filled with admiration for
[the company] and will have no word said
against it in my presence”? Research can
help, if it can reach the right people,
ask the right questions, and interpret the
findings with real knowledge and insight.
That is the heart of our approach.
Stewart Lewis joined MORI in 1976, after
graduating in modern languages from Cambridge
University. He now heads the Ipsos MORI Reputation
Centre, serving the needs of clients across a range
of sectors. As well as directing work for clients,
Stewart is a frequent speaker and writer on the
subject of corporate communications. He is a full
member of ESOMAR (The European Society for
Opinion and Marketing Research), a committee
member of the International Corporate Identity
Group, and Chairman
of the International
Visual Communication
Association.
He can be reached at
stewart.lewis@
ipsos-mori.com.
What You Do Speaks So Loudly That
I (Sometimes) Cannot Hear What You Say
By Edouard Lecerf
Politicians have always known that
reputation counts. They’ve even
borrowed a few techniques from
marketing, such as quantitative and
qualitative studies. If companies
took the time to grasp the
importance of this intangible asset,
here too, the gap would be filled.
Leading organizations monitor or –
even better – anticipate shifts in public
opinion. Today, executives worry
just as much about the citizen as
they do about the consumer, and
just as much about the influencers
as they do about the distributor.
They have understood that the
organization, by the simple affirmation
of its existence, is constantly
“speaking.” And that it is heard.
An organization’s personality is also
subject to the laws of the court
of opinion, which is chaired by the
general public, the opinion leaders,
and those that relay it. In the eyes of
these audiences, the organization
will build its image and reputation
through elements that it masters
(its products, its commercial and
social policies, and its communications)
or through more exogenous
elements (the competition, the
market, the sector image, and the
social and economic climate). This
is why it is worthwhile to monitor
and understand each of these
audiences, and why it is just as
crucial to understand the opinion
climate when reviewing an
organization’s image.
What you do speaks so loudly that
I cannot hear what you say
This telling Ralph Waldo Emerson
quote summarizes in a way what
Ipsos Public Affairs is proposing to
organizations: to help them understand
what they are so that they can
say it even better. We have built
our expertise in all sectors where
reputation and image are fundamental
elements. Our analytical tools
bring the structure and the weight
of each dimension in shaping the
overall image up to date. The lessons
learned from monitoring many
social, financial, environmental, and
leadership crises put their seriousness
into perspective and help
anticipate and respond to such
crises in the future.
The organization’s image, the
executives’ image, readability, the
benefits expected from a strategy,
the preparation and monitoring
of the impact of a communication,
a sponsorship or an action, and the
trends in national and international
opinion are but a few of the
techniques used to assess and
analyse a company’s reputation.
Edouard Lecerf has been Managing Director of Ipsos Public Affairs in France since 2000,
after three years as Deputy Managing Director within the company. A graduate of the
French Political School (IEP), he started his career as a journalist
before joining the market research industry. In 1987, with IFOP, he
was responsible of political and international public opinion polls
and studies. From 1990–1995, he was head of the Opinion-Media
department of the French Government Information Service, before
being appointed Deputy Managing Director of Louis Harris (France).
He can be reached at edouard.lecerf@ipsos.com.

Ipsos Ideas
re . sili . ency noun 1: an occurrence
of rebounding or springing back
2: the physical property of a
material that can return to its
original shape or position after
deformation that does not exceed
its elastic limit
The Resiliency Concept By Darrell Bricker
It’s All About Trustmarks
The future will be dominated by competition for public trust. People are
increasingly turning to “trustmarks” to sort through the cluttered information
economy marketplace. For organizations interacting with the public, trustmarks
will supersede the trademarks of old. A trustmark goes well beyond a good brand
name; today, people are seeking guidance of a higher order.We want to be able
to judge quickly if the information coming our way – about products to buy,
decisions to make, causes to support – is authoritative, credible, and reliable.
We aren’t seeking a signal about the quality of the product as much as the
trustworthiness of the producer, whether it is a corporation, a charity,
or a political leader.
As the default position tends to be set on
scepticism rather than trust, the trustmark
holder possesses a rare and valuable asset.
Leaders must excel beyond the traditional
management skills of finance, strategy,
and marketing to master the political skills
necessary to forge trusting relationships
with the new knowledge consumer/citizen,
as trustmark stewardship will become one
of the top tasks of modern CEOs.
The marriage of the most highly educated
generation in history and the Internet
places phenomenal power in the hands of
a newly enfranchised class of knowledgeable
citizens and consumers. Information has
been democratized, giving rise to heretofore
unprecedented demands for choice.The
“no alternative” mentality no longer suffices;
we will create our own alternatives if the
official offerings don’t satisfy.
Indeed, the lode of information now available
to individuals and groups is giving
rise to a revolutionary power shift from
producers to consumers. Producers are under
pressure like never before to deliver results
and be accountable for performance.
Combine this heightened consumer assertiveness
with a diminution of brand loyalty
and the potential exists for businesses –
despite having taken decades to build –
Continued…
5

6 Ipsos Ideas
The Resiliency Concept
to be destroyed in the blink of a cursor.
The challenges posed by the new knowledge
consumer/citizen are obvious, but so are
the advantages for those who can relate to
a more informed and wilful population.
When we paint this picture for our clients,
the obvious question comes back:
“Okay smart guy, what do I do about it?”
Until recently, our answers were less than
satisfying.That’s because the canon of
corporate reputation research we could
reference was weak. As much as clients
desire to understand and effectively manage
their organization’s reputation, they also
crave a reliable measurement tool that shows
the value of what they do for their employers.
In this regard, public affairs professionals
are at a major disadvantage at the boardroom
table. Sales professionals can reference
sales data, operations managers can reference
supply chain statistics, and finance professionals
have their financial
reports: what does a public
affairs professional have
to show for their efforts –
press clippings?
The ideal tool for a corporate
reputation measurement
must be able to help manage
a company’s reputation and be
able to stand up to scrutiny
from senior corporate executives.
Like so many things,
the best solutions to a
complicated problem emerge
from combining lessons across disciplines.
In this instance, it’s political polling, issues
management, brand equity, and loyalty.What
has emerged from our ongoing innovation
activities is the core concept of our
new proprietary corporate reputation
tool: resiliency.
Resiliency
Measuring corporate reputation is more
than assessing favourability and ratings
on key attributes. Ipsos Public Affairs has
developed a new approach that enables
clients to understand their corporate equity
and its resiliency: how easily their corporate
equity can be carved away or enhanced
by media coverage and communications.
The development of the resiliency model
shows that it is difficult for a company to
Reputation:
You only know
what is worth
when it lies
in tatters
– Alison Maitland
in The Financial Times,
March 31, 2003.
Table 1 After a After a
Start Negative Positive
Elements Point Message Difference Message Difference
Son/daughter work for 60.5 48.9 –11.6 61.4 0.9
Recommend 60.3 49.3 –11 60.7 0.4
Loyal 48.8 43.4 –5.4 49.1 0.3
Trust 59.4 47.3 –12.1 56.4 –3
Comfortable investing in 51.7 41.1 –10.6 51.3 –0.4
compensate for negative press by communicating
a positive story (ask any politician
who has been the victim of a negative ad
campaign). Our research indicates that a
negative message or incident, such as a strike
by workers, can have a significant impact
on overall reputation, whereas a positive
message, such as an award for environmental
stewardship, can have very little impact.
Negative messages associated with financial
reporting and those associated
with the workplace were
shown to detract from the
overall reputation of a company
more than messages on
customer service or product
quality. However, none of
the positive messages tested
had a significant impact on
corporate reputation.
There are five key business
measures that are standard
to the resiliency model:
trust, loyalty, likelihood to recommend
the company, workplace, and investing.
Various categories of communications have
been tested, including customer service,
product quality, citizenship, and financial
reporting.
A summary of the impact of positive
and negative messages on the five business
elements is shown in Table 1.
The model also enables us to establish norms
for overall opinion, on the five business
elements, and on the expected shifts
in opinion. Further, we can determine the
messages that will be most effective in
enhancing reputation and the messages that
would be most detrimental to reputation.
We can also segment the marketplace to
determine the profile of consumers most
affected by key messages. Standard penalty-
reward analysis and competitive mapping
can also be conducted under the model.
One of the key findings from our research
so far is that likelihood of recommending
the company to family and friends was the
most significant driver of overall reputation
of the five business elements that were
included in the testing, followed by trust
in the company. Of lesser significance
were “happy if my son or daughter worked
there,” loyalty and investment confidence
(i.e.,“I would be comfortable investing in”).
We also found that not all customers care.
About one in five respondents are significantly
affected by negative messages – their
opinion can shift by more than twenty
points. Comparatively, less than ten percent
are similarly affected by positive messages.
Our research also shows that companies
need to concentrate on building a
reservoir of goodwill through consistently
strong performance and a history
of positive product and customer
experiences. While philanthropic activities
can contribute another layer, they are rarely
sufficient to protect against an attack on
one’s reputation.The bottom line is that how
an organization handles bad news is the
most important element in determining its
overall corporate reputation. It’s in times
of crisis that trustmarks are made or lost.
Author’s note:This article borrows heavily on the
work of Natalie Lacey of Ipsos Public Affairs, who
developed the resiliency model.Additional contributors
included John Wright,Sandra Guiry, and John Hallward.
Darrell Bricker is President and COO of Ipsos Public Affairs in North America. He joined the company in 1989 after holding increasingly
senior research positions, including director of public opinion research in the Office of the Prime Minister of Canada. Darrell is often
called on by the media to comment on the major issues of the day, particularly federal and international politics and election campaigns.
He is the author of several books, including Searching for Certainty (Doubleday Canada). Contact: darrell.bricker@ipsos-na.com.

Corporate Reputation with Consumer-Clients By Nando Pagnoncelli
The Importance of Media Segmentation and Socio-Semiotic Approach and Evaluation Areas
Ipsos Ideas
The importance of a corporation’s reputation and image among consumers stems from
the awareness that buying behaviour is based on a set of circumstances, values, and
loyalties, as well as technical, distribution, and price characteristics. A consuming act has
a meaning that can be broken down into what the product or service communicates
to the consumer (the message) and how it is communicated (the medium).
Continued…
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8 Ipsos Ideas
Corporate Reputation with Consumer-Clients
Familiarity and Favourability (Investors)
High level of
information from TV
High level of
entertainment from TV
Not
Informed
Since the reputation is both the message
and medium, it gains additional importance
in the present context of uncertainty. Corporate
reputation coexists with satisfaction,
loyalty, and equity strategies, but has its own
unique characteristics: it is built up over
long periods, it can change very quickly,
it involves a judgement of the company as
“corporate citizen” (apart from judgements
made from the consuming experience), and
it is tied to individuals’ levels of awareness.
In analysing corporate reputation it is
important to define
1. who the clients are and how to
sample correctly;
2. what the communicative meta-channels
of the main actors are (history, news,
products, sponsorships, advertisements,
logos, etc.); and
3. what the company reputation is within
its sector. (Key factors differentiating
them from their competition and general
perception of other businesses present
in the sector).
Consumer-Client Groups
The definition of client must be as broad
as possible, and may include present and
Informed
Uninformed
Well
Informed
potential clients of a company and of its
competitors. Corporate reputation studies
require a broader approach than a customer
satisfaction study insomuch as the objective
is to study the mood concerning a given
company: if study designs are too limited,
results would offer a partial and decontextualised
vision. It is fundamental to identify
a suitable customer classification system
designed around the needs of the reputation
study, since often some clusters have anticipatory
capacities regarding changes in
perception, while others have mixed needs.
Media Segmentation
Apart from the corporate classifications
and those based on use, loyalty, and on
socio-demographic/cultural data, it is very
useful to create a classification based on
attitude to media.This classification studies
the media the subject is exposed to (which
ones and for how long) and the quality
of the use (how).
This classification emerges from the fact
that not all media is the same, and often
television information tends to level out and
standardise perceptions. Media segmentation
makes it possible to evaluate various levels
and different qualities of information that
Pay attention to
information sources
outside TV
often relate to higher critical thought.
Media segmentation offers the best expression
of a company’s corporate reputation
potential because it compares the evolution
of clusters of consumer-clients over time.
In the Italian market, we identified four
large clusters (based on 5,000 interviews):
The Well Informed cluster is made up of
people sensitive to information transmitted
by several sources: big readers of the
business pages and Internet users for information
purposes, they love to investigate;
they shun entertainment television.They
are the most sensitive to minor news items
and are the most capable of forming a
critical opinion.
The Informed have a good level of information,
often due to investigative television
programmes.To increase their information
level, at times they consult other media, such
as newspapers, the radio, and the Internet.
Their attitude towards information is open,
although often passive, and not always
inclined to in-depth study. Highly informed
of more well-known events, they are not
always able to form a critical opinion.
The Misinformed/Less Informed are people
who relate particularly to entertainment

Corporate Reputation with Consumer-Clients
television.They often take in superficial
information and, although they watch the
news and sporadically use other media,
to a large extent, they shun information and
investigation, they are easily conditioned
by advertising and communication, and
they tend to have prejudices and absorb
news uncritically.
The Not Informed have average television
use, but they watch entertainment television
almost exclusively and hardly ever use other
media for information.They frequently
express low critical capacity and an often
passive and fatalistic attitude.
The Socio-Semiotic Approach
Apart from defining the customers, it is
necessary to define reputation and how it
is transmitted: a motivational analysis is
essential for evaluating the reputation of
the sector and the company and for identifying
important values, communiqués,
and communication channels. In this area,
it is often very useful to study the way
the company presents itself to the world
around it, which could be offered by a
socio-semiotic approach.
This is a semiotics-based approach, so it
does not consult consumers – whose vision
is limited by their own experience. Rather,
it directly and profoundly addresses all the
company issues as developed at different
levels (media, internal, interpersonal, etc.)
and circulating publicly as continuous
communications flow. Issues are analysed as
elements of the company’s communications
system, understood as resulting from all the
lesser or more explicit, public, and conscious
communicative actions, including advertising
and PR, internal communication, logistics
and partnerships, warranties for goods and
services, the public image of top management,
and the company organisation, which
altogether form the phenomenological
manifestation of the actual company.
Lastly, it is important to identify the
decisive factors and the reputation of the
category or sector – a clear representation
of the context – and to define the relative
position of the company.
Still, the definition of reputation – which
must be adapted to each individual case –
can be organised into a few large areas:
Different behaviour of the targets about corporate image statements
• The direct and indirect experience of
consumption or use, both referring
to product and to the company’s capacity
to connect with consumers.
• The perception of the company as a
corporate citizen; in other words,
the perception of its relationship with
employees (would recommend working
for, perceived discriminations), attention
to social issues and the environment,
its respect for laws and ethical behaviour
in the way it operates in the market (as
well as formal compliance with the law),
its independence, etc.
• The future prospects concerning the
market and the capacity of the company
to plan for the future (perception of
and sharing of the corporate vision,
innovativeness, strategies, stock market
trends, etc.).
In brief, the growing role of corporate
reputability requires in-depth reflection on
three aspects: who the reference public
Ipsos Ideas
is and how its diversity can be analysed
for operative representation, which metachannels
the company uses to talk about
itself, and the company’s reputation within
a given market.
For more on consumer-clients, see “Myth Today” in
Mythology by Roland Barthes, L’era del cliente by
Antonio G. Busacca, “Marketing e comunicazione dopo
l’11 settembre” AA.VV., in Micro&Macro Marketing,
and Brands Laid Bare: Using Market Research for
Evidence-Based Brand Management by Kevin Ford.
For background on the socio-semiotic approach, see
Semiotics, Marketing and Communication: Beneath the
Signs, the Strategies by Jean-Marie Floch, and Semiotica
al marketing, Roberto Grandi, editor.
The article includes the contribution from Sara Taddei,
a socio-semiotic researcher with Ipsos Italy, with an
academic background in socio-semiotic from Bologna
University, where she studied under Umberto Eco,
Ugo Volli, and Caterina Schiavon.
Nando Pagnoncelli is CEO of Ipsos Italy. He has over fifteen years of experience in research analysis and general management, and has
held senior positions including Managing Director of the Sofres Group in Italy. Nando is the Vice President of Assirm (Italy’s market research
institute), serves on the science board of several leading Italian associations, and has published political essays. He also teaches at Università
Cattolica in Milan. Contact: nando.pagnoncelli@ipsos.it.
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10 Ipsos Ideas
Employees and Companies:Towards a Transactional Relationship
By Antoine Solom
For many years now,
the relationship between
the employee and the
company has been
touted as one of the key
pillars of a sustainable
economy. Is this not
somewhat paradoxical,
now that the traditional
model of the employee
pursuing a life-long
career within the company
is a thing of the
past? In an increasingly
uncertain economic
environment, this tacit contract has indeed taken a beating. At the same time,
the new employee generation is also found to be more individualistic and less
predictable. Some feel they are less involved than their predecessors, almost distant
toward the company and its management, as they place greater importance on
their personal lives than on their professional careers – let us note that the HR
discourse readily substitutes “professional career” for “professional evolution,”
a term which implies a career path that is less bottom-up and more horizontal.
This shift is not simply semantic, because
the extension of professional life, the
erosion of classic hierarchical structures,
and the generalization of matrix
organizations accelerate these trends.
It seems that the more the employer –
employee relationship is strained,
the more the company must assert the
importance of its human capital.
The increasing number of employee opinion
research studies conducted by companies
is a good example of this.The questions
asked are also a good example; hence the
recurring questions on the importance
of the sacrifices that employees are ready
to make in their personal lives in order to
advance their professional lives clearly
reflect a state of mind characteristic of the
80s and 90s.Today, we try to measure the
degree of employee commitment rather than
satisfaction, motivation, or involvement.
We will not dwell on the haziness that
surrounds the use of many of these notions
1 This study was conducted between September 6 and October 11, 2005, on a sample representative of European employees aged 18 and over
(excluding tradespeople, shopkeepers, professionals, and farmers/operators.) In total, 10,288 individuals were surveyed.
and the deviations we end up with more and
more often: can employee commitment
be summed up as a performance indicator in
the same way as stock-market performance?
If the authority–security equation that
has long governed the company–employee
relationship has done its time, what has
replaced it? A recent study conducted in
Europe by Ipsos for Accor Services on
employees’attitudes toward work and toward
their employer provides a few answers. 1

Three employee profiles emerge
The Northern European profile (Sweden,
Germany, and Belgium) exhibits both
a sharp division between personal life and
professional life, a strong loyalty to the
company, and a particularly high reported
level of involvement, especially in Germany.
A few figures: barely 18% of German
employees “often think that they would
like to do other work,” and 71% stated that
they had never “thought of leaving their
company.” These are the same employees
who stress that “security” best describes
work in their opinion and who consider
themselves, as do Belgians, not only the
most involved in their work, but also the
most satisfied with their salaries, the
content of their work, and their relations
with their superiors. Involvement versus
security seems to be the Northern
European equation.
On the other hand, the English profile
stands out as a counter-model to this
equation.When asked what work means to
them, almost 40% of English employees
stated that it means routine. How involved
are they in their work? Answers are quite
divided, with 30% feeling that they are
sufficiently involved and 12% feeling that
they are slightly involved or not at all!
However, one out of every two English
employees stated that he or she is “more
involved than before”– a European record.
What is taking shape in England is a system
in which the value of work is low and
represents an individual investment that
must be maximized.The majority of English
employees surveyed (55%) – versus barely
one third in Germany and Sweden – stated
that they contemplate leaving their employers,
carefully examine offers that come
up, or have already planned their departure.
Is this a logical consequence of an extremely
dynamic economic environment and a
flexible and fluid labour market? In any
event, we are far from the German or
Swedish loyalty.
Another example of this phenomenon is
the fact that English employees are among
those most satisfied with their working
environment, their relations with their
superiors, and their training opportunities.
However, English employees also have
the greatest expectations in these areas,
not to mention that 83% – almost 20 points
higher than our panel average – feel that
salary has an “essential or very important”
impact on their involvement with work.
Thus, the average English employee is
“satisfied” and “fulfilled at work,” but he
is also watchful and ready to seize any
existing market opportunities.
The French profile is different.The first
distinctive trait is the intermingling between
personal and professional life. Sixty percent
of French employees say that their work
demands more and more of them outside of
working hours, which is 12 points higher
than the European panel average. French
employees also state that they are more
likely to “solve personal problems during
their working hours.”
Is this the inevitable consequence of applying
a 35-hour workweek, considering that
French employees are some of the most
productive in Europe? Undoubtedly yes,
but let’s remember that 60% of Spanish and
Italian employees also say that their work
demands more and more of them outside
of working hours. Are we therefore dealing
with a Latin prism? The deep intermingling
between personal and professional life
remains, in any event, a key to understanding
the French model.
Another dimension to stress is that French
employees place the greatest importance
on “pleasure” when it comes to work, as
opposed to German employees (“security”)
or English employees (“routine”).The
emotional weight associated with work is
another key to understanding French
employees. Close to 42% of our sample feel
they “often fulfill themselves at work,”
as compared to the 30% average obtained
in this survey.This would seem to describe
a relationship that we could qualify as
hedonistic, by stretching it a bit, because it
merges the personal life with the professional
life on the job. Does this also provide
one of the explanations for the paradoxically
high level of “professional frustration”
regarding remuneration and career-building
opportunities? Like their English counterparts,
French employees demonstrate a
real appetite for professional mobility or
evolution, as opposed to the Germans, for
example. However, only English employees
can benefit from a truly dynamic labour
market. In a constrained environment,
Ipsos Ideas
French employees feel much greater frustration,
since their relationship with work is
far more emotional than their neighbours’
and the personal/professional life boundary
– obviously a source of balance for the
Northern Europeans – blurred.
It’s clear that socio-economic cultural
environments continue to shape
Europeans’attitudes toward their work and
their employers in a permanent way.
To what degree will German, Belgian, or
Swedish employers be able to maintain a
contractual-consensual model greatly valued
by their employees that guarantees their
loyalty and maintains a very reassuring
vision of work? In a precarious economic
context, their ability to dialogue with
their employees and to negotiate with their
representatives is an unquestionable asset.
The English model also stems from
contractual logic but no consensual regulation
whatsoever.The relationship is
necessarily of limited duration because the
attraction to the environment and the
quest to maximize one’s personal interests
are strong. In these conditions, companies
are forced to pay special attention to their
employees and have an obligation to maximize
their offers to attract or retain their
human resources – never has the term
“resource” seemed to make as much sense
as it does vis-à-vis English employees.
We are left with the French model, in
which the company and the work clearly
represent a main source of personal fulfillment,
but also of frustration because of
a lack of credible alternatives outside of
work.To what degree will French firms be
able to take advantage of this paradoxically
captive resource?
This will no doubt come about by
developing the ability to take into account
employees’ individual, personal, and professional
aspirations, in all their variety, contrary
to the very linear changes that employers
have been proposing for years. It is a
daunting task, particularly since expectations
surrounding employers who are more
proactive with their employees are so great.
Far from the classic authority–security
pattern, a new and more transactional
relationship seems to dictate the employer–
employee relationship.
Antoine Solom is Head of the Employee Relationship Management (ERM) practice at Ipsos France. Ipsos’ ERM practice provides employee
surveys and a large range of research approaches dedicated to the implementation of change and reengineering processes. Ipsos’ human
resources research extends from data capture to post-survey follow-up, with emphasis on management support in the action plan process,
and includes a global benchmarking reference, RED (Representative Employee Data). An expert in human resources research, Antoine worked
at TNS and ISR International during 10 years before joining Ipsos in 1999. He can be reached at antoine.solom@ipsos.com.
11

12 Ipsos Ideas
How Institutional Investors Assess Companies By Roger Stubbs
“The City/Wall Street/La Bourse
doesn’t understand my company – our
share price undervalues its true worth.”
This is a typical grumble of almost any
quoted company chairman.Yet more time,
money, and resources go into investor
relations now than ever before.Why is this?
After all, the basic activities, philosophy,
and management of blue-chip companies
do not change overnight.Yet a glance
at the share price history of almost any
company shows great volatility.
Perceptions versus Reality
In Ipsos MORI’s annual survey of
City opinion, we try to help our clients
understand the events and factors which
drive the major institutional investors’
and sell-side analysts’ (those who work for
brokerage houses and publish reports on
companies in their sector of specialisation)
attitudes toward specific companies. As so
often, communications plays a major role,
because opinions and judgements are based
on perceptions.
For example, one company had made
sizeable investments in IT and considered
itself to be at the cutting edge of technology
for its sector, but the impression in the
City was that technology was leaving the
company far behind – a major negative
perception and one that was dragging down
its share price. If a company knows what
misperceptions exist, it can counter them
with carefully focussed communications.
Those communications can be made more
effective by knowing the criteria on which
the City judges companies (for 22 years,
quality of management has been paramount,
currently followed by financial strength,
valuation, and cash flow) and what initiatives
make for outstanding relations with the
City (openness and honesty is a key factor).
As factors such as social responsibility and
corporate governance have featured more
prominently, in recent years the survey has
picked up on the influence they are having
on investors’ buy/hold/sell decisions. In
the 2005 survey, for example, barely half of
the investors Ipsos MORI interviewed
claimed to incorporate governance issues in
their stock selection procedure to any real
Chart 1– Image of X Shareholding Investors
% Above Average
Quality of
management
27%
42%
Share
Holder
35%
21%
Non Share
Holder
Potential for
growth
extent, although a majority say that most
companies would benefit from an increase
in the number of non-executive directors.
To determine how investors perceive different
companies in our study, each company is
scored on key criteria, such as the fictional
company example in chart 1. Overall ratings
are obtained using a favourability scale, as
demonstrated in chart 2. Results can be
tracked over time, too. Encouragingly,
we revealed in a joint Investor Relations
% Below Average
Base: All X shareholding Investors and Non X shareholding Investors (48)
who have at least heard of the company, 2005
Society/Ipsos MORI seminar held in
November 2005 that 55% of investors have
seen an improvement in the quality of
corporate investor relations over the past
two years. Spontaneously raised strengths
and weaknesses can provide valuable information
to companies about ‘top-of-mind’
issues among shareholders, and the tone
of the comments puts flesh on the bones
of the bare statistics.
Roger Stubbs is Deputy Managing Director and Research Director of Ipsos MORI, which he joined in 1972 from the NatWest Group,
where he was Head of Statistics. At Ipsos MORI, he has worked largely in the financial sector, conducting reputation work, employee studies,
new product development work, and ad tracking. In recent years, he has focussed on B2B research for professional services organisations,
and is head of business research for the company. Roger is a member of ESOMAR, a full member of the MRS, and a chartered statistician.
He can be reached at roger.stubbs@ipsos-mori.com.
67%
19%
Share
Holder
44%
29%
Non Share
Holder
Profit potential
2–3 years
67%
15%
Share
Holder
Chart 2– Familiarity and Favourability (Investors)
50%
25%
Non Share
Holder
Return to
investors
46%
25%
Share
Holder
27%
38%
Non Share
Holder