University reputation: Scale development and validation

Abstract

The hyper-competitive environment and the prominence of the stakeholder perspective force today's organizations to properly manage their reputation status. The importance of reputation for universities and higher academic institutions as a strategic intangible asset has also risen in the last two decades. Even though there are studies in the literature that attempt to develop measures of university or academic institution reputation, they are in their early stages. The current study attempts to develop a scale that measures university reputation by adopting both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. First, scale items are generated through in-depth interviews conducted with multiple stakeholders. Next, building on the relevant literature and through pre-testing the items, the university reputation scale is developed and validated by confirmatory factor analysis. The results show that university reputation is a multidimensional construct with three dimensions: academic competence, responsible management and social attractiveness. The scale developed in the current study attempts to add to university reputation literature by enabling both academicians and practitioners to assess the reputation of differing universities.