Stasis Theory as a Strategy for Workplace Teaming and Decision Making

Abstract

Current scholarship tells us that skills in teaming are essential for students and practitioners of professional communication. Writers must be able to cooperate with subject-matter experts and team members to make effective decisions and complete projects. Scholarship also suggests that rapid changes in technology and changes in teaming processes challenge workplace communication and cooperation. Professional writers must be able to use complex software for projects that are often completed by multidisciplinary teams working remotely. Moreover, as technical writers shift from content developers to project managers, our responsibilities now include useradvocacy and supervision, further invigorating the need for successful communication. This article offers a different vision of an ancient heuristicstasis theory-as a solution for the teaming challenges facing today's professional writers. Stasis theory, used as a generative heuristic rather than an eristic weapon, can help foster teaming and effective decision making in contemporary pedagogical and workplace contexts.

Genomic Contextualism: Shifting the Rhetoric of Genetic Exceptionalism

“…Stasis theory was first developed as a series of “points,” or questions, that classical rhetoricians proposed for developing policy and legal arguments. The use of the questions proposed in stasis theory can help keep a debate focused on the issues at hand by providing a way for disputants to identify four key points of disagreement and contention between them (Brizee 2008; Fahnestock and Secor 1988; Marsh 2006; Weber 2016). It has also been applied productively to multiple scientific and biomedical areas including paleontology (Northcut 2008), space exploration (Weber 2016), and research on pain and pain management (Graham 2015).…”

School improvement from the central office: A view of the five year school system strategic planning process in selected West Virginia counties

“…Because the process of strategic planning is a group activity that includes teaming and decision-making it is important to consider its social aspects. Stasis theory is a four step social knowledge building process developed in ancient Greece and refined by Roman rhetoricians (Brizee, 2008). Stasis theory suggests there are four common, underlying stases: (a) facts as derived from data (conjecture), (b) the meaning of the issue in terms of goals or objectives (definition), (c) the prioritization or seriousness of the issues (quality), and (d) a determination of what should be done (policy).…”

“…Collaboration recognizes individual interests and needs and requires trust and a willingness to share authority. Research shows that a team's ability to collaborate is increasingly important for practitioners (Brizee, 2008).…”

“…Stasis theory is chosen because its description of the inquiry process parallels the findings of this research. Brizee (2008) recommended stasis theory as a theoretical model for teaming and decision-making because of its ability to foster critical thinking and assist teams in making better decisions. This author described it as a -rigorous yet flexible analytic process‖ (p. 383).…”

“…Stasis theory is a four step social knowledge building process developed in ancient Greece and refined by Roman rhetoricians (Brizee, 2008). The model presented in Figure 5 is built more on the Greek's use of stasis as a system for inquiry and philosophy than it is on the Roman's use as a technique for argument.…”