For four days, the University of Navarra's campus in Madrid hosted the first international meeting on reputation held in Spain. Corporate Excellence - Centre for Reputation Leadership and the University of Navarra have jointly organized the International Reputation Week with the goal to respond to the major issues, challenges and challenges involved in excellent reputation management.

The congress, which brought together more than 200 experts from 20 countries, aims to become an obligatory quotation to share best practices in corporate and university reputation and to offer a framework for reflection and discussion to advance in this field. During what has been described as "the great week of reputation", the essential axes for building, safeguarding and protecting one of the most relevant elements for the future of any organization have been put on the table.

Reputation has become a strategic resource for the success of organizations. Experts say that it is a strong and lasting feeling of admiration, respect, esteem and trust from stakeholders that translates into supportive behavior. In this sense, if reputation is positive, it will be source of value generation, but if, on the contrary, it is negative, it becomes a reputational risk that will have a full impact on the levels of legitimacy, conditioning the performance and durability over time of any organization.

Three keys to reputational management

• Reputation is born and begins to be built from the very first moment an organization exists and interacts. That is why it is so relevant, because it affects us all; hence the need to learn how to manage it.
   
• Reputation management implies introducing areas of transparency and active listening, starting from within; in other words, the starting point must be the purpose -an element referred to in several of the presentations and understood as the root of reputation-. The purpose must be defined, activated internally and applied to behaviors.
• Reputation requires the introduction of a cross-cutting approach. Experts assure that a relationship of trust with stakeholders is core topic. To achieve this, it is necessary to work on the experience and contact with everyone in the organization. The management of reputation is everyone's responsibility; therefore, all units or areas of an organization must be ambassadors, builders and defenders of reputation.

During the closing ceremony, Santiago Fernández-Gubieda, director of development of the Center for University Governance and Reputation at the University of Navarra, highlighted the "creative originality" of this congress: "The valuable thing is that academics and professionals reflect together and share experiences on what reputation is and how it contributes to transform institutions". In his opinion, reputation is like a "masterguide " that financial aid us to activate purpose, co-create value with stakeholders and contribute to the common good in the environment. "Managers must protect reputation because it is the intangible asset that ensures the long-term deadline sustainability of our organizations," he said.

Ángel Alloza, CEO of Corporate Excellence - Centre for Reputation Leadership stated that "reputation is positioned as a business driver in which organizations find a safe haven, even in times of crisis and uncertainty. The new economic and social cycle in which institutions and companies are immersed - the Economics of intangibles and reputation - is already a reality. This implies integrating reputational KPIs into dashboards to monitor the impact of reputation on the business, thus guaranteeing business success and sustainability in the long term deadline. Reputation is now more tangible than ever before.

The congress has counted with the sponsorship of Telefónica and Santander as gold sponsors, DKV and LLYC as silver sponsors, Reputation Lab and TrustMaker as bronze sponsors, as well as with the partnership of CRUE Spanish Universities, CYD Foundation, European Foundation Society and Education, and World 100 Reputation Network.