Study goals
This study examines how faculty in private higher education institutions perceive and prioritize criteria when evaluating institutional reputation. Faculty, as both internal stakeholders and co-creators of reputation, remain underrepresented in reputation research compared to students and external audiences.
Relevance / originality
This is among the first applications of PAPRIKA to faculty perceptions of institutional reputation, providing an empirically grounded hierarchy of criteria and refining reputation theory by revealing differences between internal and external stakeholder priorities.
Methodology / approach
A quantitative, exploratory design employed multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) using the PAPRIKA (Potentially All Pairwise RanKings of all possible Alternatives) method Eight criteria from peer-reviewed and grey literature guided the analysis: Faculty Quality, Alumni Success, Recognition, Student Quality and Selectivity, Research and
Main results
The study shows that faculty prioritize human capital (especially academic staff quality and alumni success) over financial or internationalization metrics, pointing to a gap between internal stakeholder priorities and external ranking criteria This finding refines reputation theory by evidencing stakeholder-specific valuations and
Theoretical / methodological contributions
The study advances organizational reputation theory by demonstrating divergences between internal and external stakeholder priorities, and methodologically shows how PAPRIKA can be applied to higher education to produce consistent and bias-minimized preference weights.
Social / management contributions
Reputation strategies aimed at faculty should prioritize investment in academic staff development, alumni relations, and recognition initiatives. Resource and internationalization efforts may gain greater impact when tied to visible academic achievements.