Risks of Enterprise 2.0 in Business

The main focus of this blog has been to promote Enterprise 2.0 and as such all blog posts so far have been promoting it with out looking at possible problems that could occur. Enterprise 2.0 whilst good for business, requires social media policies to be drafted and implemented, for a sustainable social presence. Creating a social media policy (SMP) comes with the benefit of controlling social media risk. To make a point, if a company doesn't disclose their legal liabilities and responsibilities they can be subject to many legal repercussions. Such legal repercussions include:

• Loss of confidential information;
• Breach of copyright;
• Defamation;
• False statements and or misleading and deceptive conduct;
• The tort of Passing off;
• Reputation risk;
• Statutory risks including:
• Breaches of the Privacy Act;
• Breach of continuous disclosure obligations in the case of listed public companies;
• Discrimination;
• Organisation and industry specific risks posed by the organisations operating environment.

 The above is quoted from Dundaslawyers. Classification of risks can be found here.

Any risk to a companies legal standing is a risk that should be taken very seriously, and as appropriate risk should be mitigated. It is especially important for high-traffic (those with a large customer base) businesses and organisations to create an SMP. For example QUT requires an SMP, some scenarios in which it would be necessary:

Reputation Risk

Reputation risk is classified by Dundaslawyers as follows:

Reputation risk is probably the most imperative risk to minimize in the social media environment, as the intangible loss of reputation can significantly damage the hard earned brand, in a very short time.  Numerous example of reputation of organisations being harmed on Social Networking Sites occur on a seemingly daily basis.  DundasLawyers

This is relevant to QUT as they have many staff members working in close contact with students who avidly use social media, thus negating any way they can be caught liable due to students is important to QUT.

Scenario 1
A past student defames a tutor they did not like, on the QUT Facebook  age. The public now sees the tutor in negative light, and the tutor wishes to sue QUT for damages to his/her character. QUT requires its SMP to claim that any post on their social media pages, which is not directly posted by them, is not expressive of the view held by, endorsed by or affiliated at all by QUT.

False Statements and/or Misleading and Deceptive Conduct

False Statements and/or Misleading and Deceptive Conduct covers any statement published by an organisation digitally, which legally can include those made by 3rd parties with out a SMPdisclosing otherwise. This is relevant to QUT as they allow 3rd parties to post on their Facebook page.

Scenario 2
A past employee working for QUT PR department with access to QUT's Facebook page's password posts on the QUT Facebook  age that Easter holidays is a week early. A student sees this and believes it, misses an in-class exam due to their belief the class was the next week, fails their degree and then sues QUT for falsely failing the student demanding monetary repercussion. To avoid such a problem QUT's SMP requires their Facebook page to be non-representative of QUT's course structure or other calender related structures.

I am not going to go any further in depth about how QUT could be exploited with out its SMP s I have made my point apparent, with out an SMP they can be made liable for things that are out of their direct control. In conclusion their SMP should be aimed at negating all liabilities from student and staff contact with the organisation through social media.