Buy-In

As I continue to read into The Social Organization, I am continuing to re-evaluate some of the policies that I know about social media at CMU. The one thing that they have going for them is that for a majority of their constituency, learning a new collaborative technology isn’t an issue. Many students and staff at the university are very familiar with the use of social media sites and other collaboratives. For example, Blackboard, as I discussed in a previous post, has a good adaptation rate on campus. However, this is much more dictated and controlled.

Another point the chapter made was in regards to having everyone participate in the purposes that it works for. However, I don’t believe the university has capitalized on this. The most centralized location of things needing to be communicated with students is the CMU website. However, a majority of students avoid using the website unless its necessary for academic work. For example, our senior officers are not found on social media. Instead, messages from the communications division addressing well-known events are displayed. This does not fall in line with the organizational principle of transparency. Social media could be better utilized to allow quick suggestions from stakeholders at the university. The questions is, how exactly should they decide what should be shared with the constituency.