With its prominent top 10 position in the Country RepTrak®, the Netherlands leaves other European countries such as the United Kingdom (13), Germany (15) and France (19) trailing in its wake. Canada heads the list, followed by Norway and Sweden. Belgium is also very well placed, entering the top 10 for the first time at number 10. The report can be downloaded here.
Reputation management
Reputation management has been gaining ground among top Dutch businesses in recent years. “Public and government organisations in the Netherlands will have to follow suit,” says Cees van Riel, Professor of Corporate Communication at RSM and co-founder of the Reputation Institute. “In other countries, we see more and more organisations that know exactly what they stand for and that are able to communicate convincingly to important stakeholders. It’s about time that the Netherlands also starts investing seriously in this. A good reputation at country level has considerable economic advantages, in terms of tourism as well as for attracting top talent.”
Political stability
A country’s reputation is driven by three clusters of factors: an advanced economy, an attractive living environment and a stable, democratic political system. The Netherlands does particularly well with regard to the latter and is 7th of all 55 countries surveyed in terms of political stability.
The annual Country Reptrak® Survey asked 50,000 people from the G8 countries1 to share their opinion about 55 countries. The survey took place in February-March 2015 and, for the sixth time, was conducted by the Reputation Institute.
Results
In addition to the Netherlands, the top 10 mainly includes other relatively small countries such as the Scandinavian countries, Switzerland, New Zealand and Australia. Iran is at the bottom of the list (despite showing a spectacular improvement this year of nearly 11 per cent). Russia, Pakistan and Nigeria also suffer from an extremely negative image among the residents of the G8 countries. At number 22, the USA is in the middle of the list with a meagre score of 57.7, but still considerably better than China in 47th position and a score of just 42.5.
Asia
Countries in Asia are gradually improving their negative image and are clearly moving up the rankings. But, according to Professor Cees van Riel, there is still a long way to go. “Without professional reputation management at country level as in Canada and Switzerland, this will not be an easy task.”
1 G8 countries: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom and the United States
