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On social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok, value is created by individuals who are only loosely bound to the platform-and as a result, this type of organization requires very thoughtful oversight by its leaders. In this article, the authors present three governance mechanisms that should be thought-through and addressed in order to regulate user behaviour on social media. These include content moderation and user identification. They then present some of the key challenges and opportunities for platform leaders within each mechanism.

From 'best of' lists on magazine websites to employer reviews on Glassdoor, to product reviews on Amazon, to service reviews on Yelp and TripAdvisor, companies are continually being judged, and those assessments are easily accessible to everyone, everywhere. The authors describe two types of online reputational ratings-curated and uncurated-and discuss the impact they can have on organizations. They also provide guidelines for how managers can use these ratings to their advantage.

A key challenge facing entrepreneurial ventures-and any company with a game-changing new offering-is to reduce audience uncertainty about the quality of the new product or service. The authors argue that certain types of communications are more effective than others in achieving this goal. Having studied eight companies and their Twitter communication strategies, they define three characteristics of a successful social media communication: a focus on quality, a relational orientation to the user, and distinctiveness cues. They then present four distinct communication streams that an organization can embrace, from 'Sparse' to 'Multi-Dimensional', concluding that the latter is most likely to receive high levels of audience responses that affirm quality.

Prosperous and growth-oriented small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) - generally defined as firms with fewer than 500 employees -- are vital to an economy's health. In our increasingly borderless digital society, the most promising growth opportunities for SMEs tend to lie in foreign markets. But doing business in foreign markets can be both difficult and costly, and as a result, most choose to operate domestically. But the authors argue that the opportunities far outweigh the risks. They encourage SMEs to take the plunge, describing the three challenges that digital markets present and how to build a reputation online beyond a firm's borders.

We've seen plenty of unethical behaviour in the business arena over the past decade. But surprisingly, bad behaviour doesn't always lead to reputational consequences. The authors offer a Model of Reputational Loss which explains why, using Arthur Anderson and PayPal as prime examples. The key levers involved, they argue, are the firm's perceived control of the situation; perceived certainty that the event truly occurred; the level of perceived threat to stakeholders; and perceived deviance from established practices. In addition, they show that stakeholder motivation and media coverage also play key roles in whether or not an organization's reputation is significantly damaged by bad behaviour.

A positive reputation is arguably the most valuable 'intangible asset' that a firm can possess. The authors describe how reputations form within different stakeholder categories and why individual stakeholders within a group may not have identical attitudes toward a firm, despite the fact that they have the same kinds of interests in it. They describe four important categories of 'signals' that firms need to consider in order to enhance their reputation, including categorical cues; individuated information processing; credibility; and reputational stickiness.

Firms that grow very rapidly -defined as having a sales growth rate of at least 20 per cent per year for four consecutive years - are attracting considerable interest from both the private and public sectors. These firms can provide high returns for investors and become lucrative clients of consultants and banks, while governments tend to focus on their value as job creators. How can we effectively support such rapid growth firms? In search of answers, the authors studied three principal groups or 'communities of practice' that are knowledgeable about - and have a vested interest in the success of - rapid growth firms: external resource providers such as venture capitalists, bankers and consultants, whose beliefs can influence both rapid-growth firm owners and policy makers seeking advice; government policy makers, whose beliefs influence the programs, policies, and allocation of public resources (if any) targeted towards rapid growth firms; and founders of rapid growth firms, whose beliefs about growth have direct consequences for the ways in which they manage their firms. In the end they find that owners of rapid-growth firms are often skeptical of assistance offered by one of these groups, and that another can help by developing a network-based approach to policy initiatives.