An Exploration of Reputation Within Major Programme Management

Many major programmes fail to achieve their intended outcome for reasons such as cost overrun, poor planning or inaccurate demand forecasting. Such failures are often in the public eye, due to their scale, the involvement of public facilities and infrastructure, or because of the heavy investment of public funds. Consequently, failure has a detrimental reputational impact on stakeholders involved in the major programme. The purpose of this paper is thus to examine the scope and potential of the topic of reputation in the context of major programme failure. This paper is exploratory in nature and is thus conducted through a multi-dimensional literature survey, with a view to evaluating key questions on the intersections between the three areas of stakeholder reputation, major programme management and major programme failure. The paper finds that programme managers must broaden their understanding of what represents failure in a major programme context and raise their level of awareness of the implications of reputational damage as a consequence of major programme failure.
The paper is unique in evaluating the impact of major programme failure on stakeholder reputation. The implications of this study prove that issues pertaining to reputation within a major programme context are significant and warrant further research through case-based and empirical methodologies.