Information Intermediaries

Information intermediaries (or infomediaries) are those organizations that function as mediators of information among stakeholders and another organization. In the simplest form, information intermediaries are brokers of information, solely passing on information from one stakeholder to another or from an organization to its stakeholders. Most often, however, they need to be understood as active constructors of meaning, as spreading information is an activity also entailing a certain degree of transformation. In this way, information intermediaries are of key importance for the construction of corporate reputation. The rest of this entry examines the relationship between corporations and information intermediaries; the two categories of information intermediaries—specialist infomediary organizations and occasional infomediary organizations; and infomediaries from an organizational view.

Corporations, and other organizations, need to be understood contextually and ...