cross-posted to CCR 711: Network(ed) Rhetorics.
The Burt reading, Brokerage and Closure got me to thinking about the past work I’ve done with content management solutions (CMS). A CMS seeks to help work flow between the people who have to develop, review, and approve content for production. In other words, I think a CMS mediates structural holes in an organization caused by, perhaps, a lack of communication or to put it another way, a CMS bridges structural holes in organizations. In a sense, a CMS is powerful in that it electronically “broker(s) the flow of information between people” (9-10). However, from my experience, people expect a CMS to do too much. People still have to write, review, and approve content. The system does facilitate separating content from design and depending on the model, it can help users manage workflow by sending system-generated emails when users in a workflow are assigned action items.

Let me add, from this experience I also now recognize that the people who were most successful (promotion and/or raises) during the launch of the CMS were those people who were advocates for change and bridged work groups, not just to gather requirements from business managers and help others interpret requirements, but those who actively did whatever they could to improve the flow of information (low density info flow between groups). That is, they acted as ‘brokers’ in the sense that Burt is talking about, and they also paid attention to users, but didn’t get stuck when practical solutions were needed as Sullivan and Porter suggest. In other words, they didn’t get stuck in an echo chamber and didn’t get stuck in negative or pessimistic communication flows. Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. This was apparent in the readings last week. It’s easy to get caught up marketing the top 10 products, rather than seeking marketing/suggesting opportunities in the long tail.

When I think about networks and understanding structures of institutions, I find myself asking, how do we best identify the power-players or key brokers and then how best do we “map” the issues, the players, the connections (or lack thereof) between the players and issues? Plus, then we need to determine the best rhetorical options for dealing with a particular group and set of issues.
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