Reputation crises rarely begin with the event that makes them public. In their recent research, Phillips Group reviewed 30 major reputation crises across Australia and internationally to find the root causes.

For many crisis events, warning signs were already evident in complaints, incidents, audit findings, employee concerns, and regulatory feedback.

The failure to head off the crisis was not simply a lack of information. It was an inability to connect separate issues and recognize the emerging reputation risk they collectively revealed.

What the Analysis Revealed

• The information was often already there: Complaints, audit findings, employee concerns, operational incidents, and regulatory feedback frequently served as warning signs. The failure was in connecting those signs, understanding what they collectively indicated and acting before the risk escalated.
• The strongest pattern was a failure to recognize systemic risk: Emerging risks not recognized as systemic recorded the highest cumulative score across the 30 cases. Organizations often managed individual issues without recognizing the broader organizational risk developing across them.
• Reputation resilience is an organizational capability: The warning patterns were sustained by deeper conditions involving leadership, governance, culture, accountability, incentives, information flows and risk systems. Addressing the public event does not necessarily address the conditions that allowed it to develop.

Inside the Report