Social Technology: An Integrated Strategy and Risk Management Framework

Accounting firms, corporations, and nonprofits use social technology to attract and develop employees, manage business intelligence, innovate business processes, engage clients, customers, and members, and disseminate information to investors and regulators. Despite its benefits, social technology's unique reach and speed create new risks for managers, accountants, and auditors. Based upon prior research and modifications to Kaplan and Norton's (2004) balanced scorecard and the COSO (2017) Enterprise Risk Management framework, we develop an Integrated Social Technology Strategy and Risk Management Framework to model risk management during strategy selection and implementation. A field investigation involving three large accounting organizations supports the framework's representativeness for the accounting profession. This research identifies significant benefits, risks, and effective risk management controls for social technology strategies, from governance to monitoring activities. These results suggest this framework's potential usefulness to managers, auditors, consultants, and researchers examining how social technology can provide value to organizations.