CONCLUSION
After disappearing throughout much of the 20th century, the community is making a comeback thanks to social media. Not that markets or hierarchies will disappear; rather, they will be put back into their proper places. In order to engage with the aspect of community, organizations and individuals within organizations must become members of communities. They must learn once more how to serve the communities they belong to rather than focusing on benefiting from them. They must also stop trying to control these communities, and accept their equal participation within them. When dabbling in social media, organizations will lose some of their hierarchical control, and some of their measurable ROI. The benefits will be harder to measure and prove. Such is the way of communities. While your organization may not have reached this point, it may, nonetheless, find itself compatible with a community logic. If this is your case, we encourage you to embrace the community logic, take part in social media, and let it change you. The key is not to try and control the change. Some organizations may find themselves at odds with this logic, and, from our point of view, there is not much hope for them. We believe that they will be left in the wake of the social media revolution. This might not happen quickly, but we believe that it will happen eventually. Like Adler, though, we agree that communities, markets, and hierarchies never exist as pure forms. Most social groups adopt a blend of community, market and hierarchical logic. There is, therefore, room for all these defining aspects, and price and authority can have a place alongside trust in organizations that engage in social media.
