Genres of Organizational Communication: A Structurational Approach to Studying Communication and Media

Yates, JoAnne; Orlikowski, Wanda J.

doi:10.5465/amr.1992.4279545

Cited by 854 publications

(368 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…The first level was to identify appearances, objects, and sceneries; second, identifying which appearances, objects and sceneries are shown together; and third, identifying the context. By following the views suggested by Yates and Orlikowski (1992, genres of organizational communication could be characterized by having similarities in substance (social motives, themes, and topics) and forms, which refers to the observable features of structure, medium, language, or symbol. Although, Yates and Orlikowski's elaborations of genres in organizational communication (and most others using their ideas) have a principal focus on oral and written communication, this study transfers the reasoning to the field of picture analysis.…”

Section: Selecting Images From the Csr Reportsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visualizing the Phronetic Organization: The Case of Photographs in CSR Reports

Rämö

2011

J Bus Ethics

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Aspects of phronetic social science and phronetic organization research have been much debated over the recent years. So far, the visual aspects of communicating phronesis have gained little attention. Still organizations try to convey a desirable image of respectability and success, both internally and externally to the public. A channel for such information is corporate reporting, and particularly CSR reporting embrace values like fairness, goodness, and sustainability. This study explores how visual portrayals of supposedly wise and discerning values (phronesis) are used to reinforce the verbal features of CSR reporting. The two propositions underlying this study is (1) that visual images form some of the major parts of the structures of contemporary corporate reporting (particularly CSR reporting) and (2) that phronetic action in organizations is subjected not only to textual documentation, but also to visual expressions. This study also discusses how the Aristotelian concept of phronesis can be linked to contemporary concerns about responsibility, and how this is visually represented in CSR reporting. Finally, this study addresses the symbolic and contextual signification of images in corporate accounts of wisdom and responsibility.

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Section: Selecting Images From the Csr Reportsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visualizing the Phronetic Organization: The Case of Photographs in CSR Reports

Rämö

2011

J Bus Ethics

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“…These transformations of official genres, which in some instances will give rise to completely new genres, while in others will just hybridize existing ones (Yates and Orlikowski 1992;Orlikowski and Yates 1994), are dictated by the need to satisfy ''exigencies'', that is, ''objectified social needs'', that function as conventionalized motives in a variety of rhetorical situations (Miller 1984, p. 157). Examining patterns of typical responses to recurrent situations (e.g., business procedures) in organizations may enhance our understanding of new or emerging genres, such as blogs and other social media (Miller and Shepherd 2004), which are becoming more and more relevant to records-related studies.…”

Section: Genre Theory and The Social Construction Of Organizational Gmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…One of the outgrowths of genre theory builds on the application of structurational concepts and methods to the study of the nature and intrinsic characteristics of the artifacts (including documents, tools, and procedures) that people 'produce and reproduce' in organizations to carry out their activities or, more generally, ''purposeful social interactions'' (Yates and Orlikowski 1992). By expanding on the notion that human agents are ''knowledgeable and reflexive''-as structuration theory describes them (Orlikowski 1992, p. 406)-genre theory recognizes the centrality of the users of any information system.…”

Section: Genre Theory and The Social Construction Of Organizational Gmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the context of records creation and use: ‘Hard’ versus ‘soft’ approaches to records management

Foscarini

2010

Arch Sci

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Current records management methodologies and practices suffer from an inadequate understanding of the 'human activity systems' where records managers operate as 'mediators' between a number of complex and interacting factors. Although the records management and archival literature recognizes that managing the active life of the records is fundamental to their survival as meaningful evidence of activities, the context where the records are made, captured, used, and selectively retained is not explored in depth. In particular, the various standards, models, and functional requirement lists, which occupy a vast portion of that literature, especially in relation to electronic records, do not seem to be capable of framing recordsrelated 'problems' in ways that account for their dynamic and multiform nature. This paper introduces the idea that alternative, 'softer' approaches to the analysis of organizational functions, structures, agents, and artifacts may usefully complement the 'hard', engineering-like approaches typically drawn on by information and records specialists. Three interrelated theoretical and methodological frameworksnamely, Soft Systems Methodology, Adaptive Structuration Theory, and Genre Theory-are discussed, with the purpose of highlighting their contributions to our understanding of the records context.

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“…Archival description Wanda Orlikowski, Joanne Yates and colleagues at the MIT have undertaken a number of studies of genres in organisations from a structurational perspective (Orlikowski and Yates 1994;Yates and Orlikowski 1992), viewing genres as socially recognised communicative transactions that become organising structures and templates for behaviour as they are enacted over time [see, for example, their analysis of business presentations and the use of PowerPoint (Yates and Orlikowski 2007)]. Their analysis shows the ways in which genres develop, are used to structure communication and then in turn are modified in an ongoing cycle.…”

Section: Genres and Recordkeepingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Documentary genre and digital recordkeeping: red herring or a way forward?

2008

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The purpose of this paper is to provide a preliminary assessment of the utility of the genre concept for digital recordkeeping. The exponential growth in the volume of records created since the 1940s has been a key motivator for the development of strategies that do not involve the review or processing of individual documents or files. Automation now allows processes at a level of granularity that is rarely, if at all, possible in the case of manual processes, without loss of cognisance of context. For this reason, it is timely to revisit concepts that may have been disregarded because of a perceived limited effectiveness in contributing anything to theory or practice. In this paper, the genre concept and its employability in the management of current and archival digital records are considered, as a form of social contextualisation of a document and as an attractive entry point of granularity at which to implement automation of appraisal processes. Particular attention is paid to the structurational view of genre and its connections with recordkeeping theory.

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Genres of Organizational Communication: A Structurational Approach to Studying Communication and Media

Cited by 854 publications

References 34 publications

Visualizing the Phronetic Organization: The Case of Photographs in CSR Reports

Visualizing the Phronetic Organization: The Case of Photographs in CSR Reports

Understanding the context of records creation and use: ‘Hard’ versus ‘soft’ approaches to records management

Documentary genre and digital recordkeeping: red herring or a way forward?

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