Exploring Transparency, Trust and Social Media Towards Organization’s Reputation Risks: A Conceptual Framework

The rise of the social media is rapidly changing how organizations go about with their daily business. Reputation risk is one of the key business activities that all organizations need to deal with and it is an increasingly important area of concern in today’s business world. Due to the existence of the social media, reputation risk has expanded and become more dynamic. It is currently the priority list in the organization’s business risk. The consequences of the social media could affect the activities of an organization; and its stakeholder’s trust and expectations. It is important for organizations to be attentive of what the stakeholders mention about them in the social media. The stakeholders are looking for the truth about the organization such as transparency and consistency. The aim of this conceptual paper is to discuss the elements of transparency and trust with regards to reputation risk between the organization and stakeholder relationship. This relationship predictably is mediated by the social media as one of the variables. Propositions to guide for further research are also developed.