🚀 go-pugleaf

I am interested in finding "literature" -- studies, analyses,
etc. -- on the relation of computer networks to 'organizational
governance'.   I am also interested in reading interesting
projections as to how and whether networks might be employed in
civil governance.
 
People working in organizations with a highly developed email and
conference architecture often report that the network plays a
major if indirect role in administration.  It stimulates,
preserves, and makes visible conversations among people on
subjects tangentially if at all related to their job description.
No doubt employees have always talked about a wide range of
issues, but networks promote this widening of interest and
present them to the executive formally responsible for deciding
these issues.  As such they can take on a life and weight of
their own.  At one extreme the executive will find himself
ratifying the consensus of the net; at the other he will resent
all this backseat driving in his baliwick. 

I am wondering whether any management or organization theorist,
B-school professor, sociologist, or even anthropologist has
looked at this phenomenon systematically.  On which issues is
this influence felt most strongly?  What are its limits?  Etc.
 
It is possible to imagine that networks might be used directly in
civil government (obviously to organize interest groups, for one
point).  Does anybody know of any intelligent thinking on this?
 
Fred