COMPANY INTEGRITY MANAGEMENT IN THE NEW SOCIAL NETWORK ENVIRONMENT: A STUDY OF SMALL, MEDIUM AND LARGE FIRMS ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER

Companies are increasingly recognizing that social networks are a force to contend with in reputation management. There are numerous examples of how single voices using viral systems have, in a matter of days, reached out to millions about poor service or flawed products. Managing social networks is, however, not without cost and thus one could reasonably assume that larger companies would have better defined strategies for social network reputation management than smaller ones. The paper explores this assumption and offers a integrity management model. The social network activities of ninety nine different size companies (33 small, 33 medium and 33 Large) were examined and results supported that larger companies are slightly more responsive but smaller firms seem to respond more quickly. Of interest was the number of firms (of all sizes) without social media sites. There appears to be a general lack of a strategic framework for thinking about communities as most firms in the study were not monitoring, integrating and leveraging social media adequately.