Michaela Trierweiler,
"Designing a framework for small and medium enterprises to build a fraud management program in times of digitalization"
, 2023
Original Titel:
Designing a framework for small and medium enterprises to build a fraud management program in times of digitalization
Sprache des Titels:
Englisch
Original Kurzfassung:
Small and medium enterprises (SME) are attractive targets for perpetrators of fraud because their limited resources in terms of staff, money, and IT knowledge make them vulnerable. This thesis investigates of how to manage fraud as a specific risk to SMEs in a digital and socio-technical work environment. Based on a design science research approach, a comprehensive and generic fraud management framework (FMF) was developed to allow SMEs to address individual fraud risks, encompassing occupational and cyber fraud. The multi-vocal literature review for this thesis revealed a gap in academic research regarding fraud management concepts tailored to SMEs and, thus, set the baseline for a first architectural concept of a FMF. Secondly, a generalized FMF was built with all the details and subsequently evaluated by applying the FMF in an SME company. The components of the FMF consist of different documents holding concrete advice, checklists, templates, and forms, which ensures a flexible application. The notation of the FMF is oriented toward given control or cybersecurity standards. This research project contributes in several academic and practical ways. First, it enriches the academic knowledge base of fraud management literature through the proposed FMF. Second, it contributes to the design science research community by introducing the cascading artifact approach. Third, the FMF shall support SME practitioner in acting legally, avoiding loss of money and reputation as a. negative impact of fraud. Future research opportunities arise from a situation that the literature base is currently increasing, which allows conducting mapping studies, for example, to update some parts of the FMF. With respect to the data and information captured while applying the FMF, an IS-supported version of the framework may be a solution that reduces manual work through automatic reuse of the captured information.
Forschungs-