A company can describe its values in a campaign. Employees encounter those values at work, while customers judge them through the service they receive. Those experiences do not always produce the same verdict.
Research co-authored by Dr Randa Diab-Bahman examines that difference within an Arab business setting, bringing employees and customers into the same discussion about corporate reputation.
Published in the World Sustainable Development Outlook 2025, the study surveyed 684 employees and 351 customers of a telecommunications company in the Arab world. Diab-Bahman worked with Abrar Al-Enzi and Sapheya Aftimos on the research.
Reputation from more than one viewpoint
The study examined trust, stakeholder experience, ethical alignment and perceptions of the company’s commitment to well-being and social and religious obligations.
Both groups generally viewed the company favourably. But the findings also showed that similar experiences or signals could produce different responses.
That is a useful complication for businesses accustomed to presenting reputation as a single score. An employee and a customer may encounter the same organisation through very different relationships.
The research is a case study of one company, not a national ranking or proof that a particular communications strategy will work everywhere.
Why cultural context belongs in the discussion
Diab-Bahman’s wider published work also examines corporate social responsibility in an Arab context. A 2024 paper considers the implications of applying sustainability and responsibility concepts within the region.
The practical issue is how broad commitments become meaningful locally. A business may use internationally familiar language while employees and customers assess its behaviour through their own expectations about fairness, responsibility and community.
For managers, that raises a straightforward question: whose interpretation is being measured?
A campaign may be well received publicly while an internal policy remains poorly understood. Conversely, a workplace practice valued by employees may receive little attention outside the organisation. Neither situation can be understood fully through publicity alone.
A useful question for Kuwaiti businesses
The research offers a starting point for a more specific conversation about trust.
Companies can ask employees and customers separately what they experience, compare the answers, and examine where their own account differs. Those are management questions as much as communications questions.
They also require restraint in interpreting the results. Positive sentiment does not establish that every practice is effective, and a disagreement between groups does not automatically identify its cause.
Diab-Bahman’s contribution is to put those different perspectives into the same frame. For businesses in Kuwait, the relevance lies in the question her work raises: whether reputation is being evaluated through the people who experience the organisation, or mainly through the messages it sends about itself.
