Nexus Work: Brokerage on Creative Projects
研究创意项目中中介者如何整合他人想法，通过民族志调查纳什维尔乡村音乐产业的23位独立制作人，发现模糊性在集体创意过程中的三种类型，并揭示制作人如何根据模糊性类型运用中介实践促进集体创意成果。
This study examined how brokers on creative projects integrate the ideas of others. We use the term “nexus work” to refer to brokerage requiring synthesis or integration, rather than just communication or transference of ideas. With an ethnographic investigation of 23 independent music producers in the Nashville country music industry, we examined how producers in the brokerage role fostered the integration of others' contributions throughout four phases of the creative process. We discovered that ambiguity was an inherent part of the collective creative process and identified three types: (1) an ambiguous quality metric (What makes a hit or constitutes success?); (2) ambiguous occupational jurisdictions (Whose claim of expertise entitles them to control the process?); and (3) an ambiguous transformation process (How should the work be done?). We show when each type of ambiguity became acute in the creative process and identify the practices producers used to leverage their brokerage role depending on the type of ambiguity confronted. In doing so, producers moved between two ideal conceptions of brokerage—as strategic actors extracting advantage from their position and as relational experts connecting others to foster creativity and innovation—to foster a collective creative outcome.