E-Business, SMEs and Risks: Towards a Research Agenda

Electronic business is a phenomenon that is becoming more widely researched and better understood. However, an extensive literature review has reviled limited understanding of the nature of e-business risk in organisations, and in particular in small to medium size organisations (SMEs). This paper explores the perceptions of five different stakeholder group respondents from across a range of SME organisations and members of e-business clubs. The results are intended to set an agenda for research into e-business risk and highlight that key themes revolve around strategic risk, customer risk, branding risk, security threats, legal and tax risks, leadership risks, outsourcing and dependency risk and technology risk. These themes are modelled to highlight theme dependencies and to assist in setting the research agenda.