Writing in an Emerging Organization

Abstract

This study explored the collaborative writing processes of a group of computer software company executives. In particular, the study focused on the year-long process that led to the writing of a vital company document. Research methods used included participant/observations, open-ended interviews, and Discourse-Based Interviews. A detailed analysis of the executive collaborative process posits a model that describes the reciprocal relationship between writing and the organizational context. The study shows the following: (1) how the organizational context influences (a) writers' conceptions of their rhetorical situations, and (b) their collaborative writing behavior; and (2) how the rhetorical activities influence the structure of the organization.

Strategy as Practice and the Narrative Turn

“…Depending on who participates as a legitimate practitioner or 'author' of strategy, the production of a text building from strategic conversations (called 'textualization' by Robichaud [1999]) may become a complex process of negotiation in which emerging narratives must be massaged or 'wordsmithed' to enable cohesion (Doheny-Farina, 1986;Anderson, 2004;). As suggested above, authors will also tend to draw on accepted grand narrative genres and adjust their texts to meet the expectations of powerful stakeholders not physically present at their writing (Wegner, 2004).…”

Designing to support adversarial collaboration

“…Matusov [17] discussed lawyers as adversaries, but in the context of the rhetoric between a public defender and prosecutor involved in a trial, not writing a settlement agreement. Some researchers have taken a step beyond the cooperative model, to models in which collaborators are seen as stakeholders and in some cases, competitors [10,18,20,24]. Informed by organizational development theory, this trend has helped to refine notion of how people work together on developing documents collaboratively, in terms of the division of labor associated with document creation and revision (such as the distinctions between primary authors and reviewers), power relations that address how each stakeholder represents and advocates for a broader constituency, and how the document becomes an arena for articulating, challenging and balancing divergent or competing claims, viewpoints or representations.…”

“…More broadly, the previous work has assumed that the collaboration is cooperative [2,3,22,30]. Other research described the effects of power relations on the editing process and on the final form of the document, and explored how stakeholders acted as advocates for a broader constituency [10,20,24]. While other researchers have discussed adversaries working together (e.g.…”

“Do You Want to Be in My Story?”: Collaborative Writing in an Urban Elementary Classroom

“…Bruffee's notions of collaboration grew out a particular historic time period -the early 1970s -when, as a result of open admissions policies, the profile of the typical student at city and state universities drastically changed (Forman, 1992;Wiener, 1986). In addition, his emphasis on collaborative writing reflected efforts writing teachers were making to transform the teaching of writing in school so that it would be more similar to the writing processes and genres students would need in the "real world" of work (e.g., Doheny-Farina, 1986;Lunsford & Ede, 1986;Odell & Goswami, 1985). Bruffee's (1984) central argument was that collaborative writing groups freed students from the tyranny of the teacher and, through their interactions as peers, allowed students to set their own agendas.…”