ERM and social media: Evidences from international space agencies

Organizations have always had to manage the risks (Risk Management-RM) deriving from the business activity facing the uncertainty associated with the lack of full predictability of an event occurring and its related impact. A wide range of frameworks aimed at helping the process of Risk Management have been developed. Among all the proposed framework, the COSO version has gained, since its first development in 2004, a wide consensus all over the world as it help organizations in facing the twenty-first century uncertainty. This framework potentially suggests the inclusion of a Social Media analysis in the process of Risk Management. However, the real use of an integrated framework, which includes the whole Social Media domain, remains quite an unexplored issue. Therefore, the aim of this study is twofold. First, to understand, through a Structured Literature Review, how Risk Management and Social Media are connected. The result is a thematic analysis of the academic contributions, which highlight a triple role of Social Media in the Risk Management perspective: information source about risks, risk mitigation tool and source of risks. Second, through a multiple Space Agencies case study, we analyse whether an Enterprise Risk Management framework could be used in the space sector to effectively (or not) manage the uncertainties deriving from SM and whether the role of SM in RM can be categorized in the three different types identify by the literature review.