Revisiting Issue Management: #The impact of social media

The power of social media to interfere with business objectives is undeniable. In this paper, we theorize about the impact of social media on existing issue management models. Specifically, we suggest that social media present six distinguishing features pertaining to cost, accessibility, network enablement, immediacy, permanency, and novelty that, taken together, affect managers’ attention to, and interpretation of, arising issues as well as their firm’s response to activists. From this analysis, we present a framework for understanding the impact of social media on issue management. We conclude with directions for future research designed to further our understanding of the ways in which firms are affected by the new media-enabled tactics used by activists, and the opportunity that social media represents for firms to proactively manage their relationships with stakeholders.