Thanks for the expansive reply

Per the title "Community Manager" — you're right about the misleading connotations of "Manager" — but then, job titles serve multiple purposes, so job titles are often rather laughable when read literally. I mean, my current job title is "Senior Director" which sounds like I'm either 80 yrs old, or running a old people's home.

Job titles serve as status signals to people within an industry — certain words become seen as having a specific meaning within that industry — so the companies really have to use those "code words" — or their jobs get misunderstood, they attract the wrong kind of applicant, etc. So most companies are very unadventurous in how they do their job titles. The exceptions are the creative industries where creativity and uniqueness is expected.

For example: in the industries of banking and of market research, the title "Vice President" is a very common title. It is applied to many professionals who are considered seasoned or fully trained in that business — you can easily become a VP before you're 30 yrs old, for example. But in Silicon Valley — VP is only an executive level title — there aren't many of them in any company. So the VP title signals different things in those different industries.

The job title "Manager" is often used to signal that the job is considered a "professional level" job for a person with some level of experience –it's not a job for a newbie — and it's not an administrative-level job. Whereas if the job had the title "Community Coordinator" or something — it might sound like a not-for-profit job, or more of an admin-level job. And we know the connotations (pro and con) of "Community Organizer", because of all the discussion around Obama's having had that job.

also note that inside organizations, job titles are tied to pay grades and rankings — so "Manager" jobs across the company are linked to a salary range of $ to $$. Thus changing the title can cause confusion and put the salary level into question.

you're right about the lack of scholarship/research around business-to-business communities – much of the research so far has been about informal, non-commercial communities. i remember spending time on the motorola developer forums – they were badly designed and the representatives did not, to say the least, paint a very flattering picture of the corporation – and the forums never evolved beyond the shouting match and denial stage. and now we have all this social media madness, with liberal doses of snake oil… ah well