Link: Hail to the Victors: Blogs as the catalyst for promoting bottom-up change.
if blogs are an effective means of letting professors know what students are thinking and help them to gage whether or not students understand a particular topic, wouldn’t they also be effective in the business world as a means of direct communication between front line workers and top management?
This is an interesting point. But RissRoss has an alternative view which comes across most pointedly in this remark:
Second, there is the question of anonymity. Most likely employees would want their comments to be anonymous so as not to be shunned within the business if they make an unpopular remark or because they fear their remarks may have them fired. I am not sure if it would be possible to have an anonymous blog site within the company, it would be an interesting idea to find out more about.
Nick Lapoulas also brought up this very point in a post in early October. Personally, I wonder about the need for anonymity. I will note that some people are very conscious of how others might perceive them and worry about issues like anonymity quite a bit. Others are outspoken and just seem not to care. I will also note that one of the people who raises the isssue of anonymity is one of our stronger contributtors. Is she secretly holding back on us? Would we hear so much more if she were anonymous? I shudder to think.
I do agree with the notion that one of the key things in getting a blogosphere to work is social engineering. People have to feel comfortable contributing and motivated. Motivation is perhaps the hardest part. Just pure credit does not work. For instance, we have a solid 10% of the class that is not contributing at all even though 20% of the grade depends on it. My cut is that there has to be a discourse between the participants, not pure top-down monitoring by management. To some extent, managers have to be seen as relinquising their roles as superiors and become more like regular team members.