Book Summary

Peter Firestein’s book “Crisis of Character—Building Corporate Reputation in the Age of Skepticism,” delivers a penetrating view of how the psychology and culture of corporate life determine both short- and long-term business outcomes. Written for both the professional and general reader, the book uses the informal language of internal corporate conversation to examine the components of success and failure.

In Crisis of Character, Firestein calls on business executives to accept the end of the “corporate exception”—the false assumption that corporations and individuals are subject to different ethical standards. The age of skepticism, in which the internet makes a company’s practices visible to the whole world and enables virtually anyone in that world to publicize an opinion, forces companies to exercise an unprecedented level of transparency. And, in being transparent, they must take extreme care to build an underlying reality that advances the company’s interests as it becomes known. No problem can be cured by communication alone. And the necessity to communicate means there’s no place to hide. There is no longer an alternative authenticity—to being who you say you are.

To give texture to these insights, Firestein presents a series of original concepts, including:

• Communications of Convergence—a means of engagement with stakeholders that shapes the dialogue toward a point of mutual consent.
• Value Paradox—the distinction between management’s ideas of how to create value in a company and those held by outside investors whose decisions determine the stock price—and therefore the company’s destiny.
• Structural Corruption—a condition, often within an industry, in which standard operating procedure is unethical, imposing difficult choices on well-meaning managers.
• Competence Tribe / Power Tribe—a distinction between two opposing approaches to work that often remains hidden until a crisis occurs, and then may determine the group’s survival.

To help companies achieve a balance between their internal realities and the demands of investors and society, Firestein offers a comprehensive set of strategies titled:

• Core Values and the Authentic Leader: Establish Core Values, and Reputation Will Follow
• See Yourself through Stakeholders’ Eyes: Market Intelligence and the Art of the Perception Study
• Define Your Company’s Landscape: The Power of Stakeholder Mapping
• Build Your Reputation from the Inside Out: Become the Company You Want the World to See
• Tell Your Corporate Story: Engagement and the Communications of Convergence
• Prepare for Crisis: How the CEO Saves the Company Every Day
• The Governance Imperative: Oversight, Informing the Board, and Compliance

“Crisis of Character—Building Corporate Reputation in the Age of Skepticism” is available for pre-order at Amazon.com.