Conceptualizing communicative practices in organizations: Genre-based research in professional communication
Business Communication Quarterly; New York; Dec 2000; Mark Zachry.

SINCE THE MID 1980s, researchers in professional communication and related fields have been discussing ways of studying the large patterns of discourse that circulate in contemporary organizations--organizations ranging from industrial companies in the new economy to computer-based classrooms. Using a genre-based approach to their studies, these researchers are now offering new insights into the origin, reproduction, and transformation of communicative practices in such organizations. For example, most readers of this journal are probably already familiar with Yates's acclaimed study (1989), Control through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management, or they may have read Priscilla Rogers's analytical study (2000) of how CEO presentations are received. Readers interested in business communication pedagogy may have also read Janis Forman and Jone Rymer's study (1999), "Defining the Genre of the `Case Write-Up,"' which was published in the Journal of Business Communication.

Such research, in fact, is routinely showing up in nearly all professional communication journals, as researchers turn to genre as a way of framing their studies. This upsurge in genre-based research during the last decade and a half suggests that there is something particularly productive about the idea of genre. In this column, I explore why researchers have been drawn to genre-based studies and suggest some of the work that this approach can do for the field in the future.

Redefining Genre

For those who have not been following this line of research, it is worth noting that genre has taken on a special meaning for contemporary researchers. It was not long ago that the immediate associations most people had for the term genre were fairly staid and arcane. A genre was associated with a formulaic structure, or, perhaps, an excruciatingly crafted literary work that belonged to a recognized tradition. Nearly sixteen years ago, however, the term took on a much more complex meaning when Carolyn Miller provocatively argued that a genre was defined not only by a recognized form, but also by a set of associated actions. In combination, the form and action associated with one text could be compared to others to establish types of routine communicative action. Two instances of a type, however, are never exactly the same. Therefore, if researchers wanted to really understand the types of forms and actions communicators used, they would have to recognize not only what made instances similar, but also how they could be differentiated. The concept of genre consequently became more complex than overly simplified, traditional notions suggested.

Rethinking Context in Professional Communication Research

This change in how researchers define a genre generated a great deal of interest among researchers who follow rhetorical theory, but, by itself, does not seem to have attracted the attention of a large number of professional communication researchers. A concurrent development in professional communication studies actually seems to have led researchers to turn to contemporary genre theory as a way of framing their inquiries. At about the same time as Miller's publication, several researchers were beginning to draw connections between the workplace, society, and communication in their situated studies of professional documents (see, for example, Odell & Goswami, 1985).

This line of inquiry posed several challenges for researchers who needed to define contextual frameworks for their studies. Some of these researchers advocated a type of generalized approach to studying "the practice of rhetoric in today's economic world" (Debs, 1993, p. 164) or of thinking about "rhetorical context" (Harrison, 1987, p. 10). In contrast to these generalized theories of context, other researchers defined context by the institutional and organizational settings in which people communicate. Defining context from an institutional perspective allowed these researchers to focus their attention on definable-though still complex-sites of communicative exchange. However, focusing on context in either of these ways presented two theoretical problems for researchers. First, this approach is often built on the assumption that context can be identified by a known set of characteristics.

Recognizing this challenge, Craig J. Hansen observes that the "context, in any setting, is layered: the difficulties in its characterization are exacerbated by unfamiliar value systems" (1996, p. 306). Studying communicative practices in "context" requires acquaintance with value systems that many professional communication researchers may not be familiar with, and-more importantly-such an approach is built on the assumption that all such value systems are identifiable. Second, this approach assumes that context can be circumscribed or defined. "Context" has come to represent-for some researchers-a stable, explanatory framework for understanding communicative practices. Such an approach, however, reinforces the problematic idea that communicative practices exist apart from all other activities. Despite the efforts of multiple professional communication scholars to define the boundaries of context, researchers still struggle with the question of how broadly or narrowly context should be defined. Because of these inherent problems with the notion of context, in many recent studies researchers have decided to integrate their examinations of communicative action with studies of the situations) in which those actions occur. Contemporary genre-based researchers, for example, use communicative action rather than context as their unit of analysis, and thereby avoid investing context with too much explanatory power.

A Strp Beyond Context for Researchers

Moving beyond simple notions of context was necessary for researchers in professional communication studies because neither high-level social theories of communication nor narrowly focused studies of individual practices provided much insight into the patterns of communicative action that define organizations. Rather than framing their studies at either the macro- or micro-level, several researchers (including Freedman & Smart [1997], A. D. Van Nostrand [1997], and Orlikowski & Yates [1994]) have moved toward a more intermediate perspective. Rather than abstractly describing the flow of information in institutions or conducting close rhetorical analyses of individual texts, these professional communication researchers are examining the rhetoric of typified communicative practices in social organizations. Fusing social networks of activities at the organizational level with observable text-production habits, these genre researchers create a theoretical space for examining historicized patterns of workplace communication. Such an approach extends current research by reconsidering communication as a set of practices embedded in a larger sociohistorical network of activities (see Spinuzzi, 2000; Zachry, 2000). This approach is particularly valuable for conceptualizing communicative practices in social organizations because it provides a way to theorize large-scale patterns of communication while focusing on the social purposes of individual practices.

Why Use Genre as a Framework for Research?

Researchers in our field have long recognized that to deepen our knowledge about professional communication, we must periodically investigate the actual work that texts do in the organizations where professionals operate. In short, we need regular reports about the communicative practices that exist in the larger networks of workplace activity all around us. A genre-based research approach draws attention to the dynamic communicative routines that are differentiated over time and across the spaces in which people are attempting to get things done. Furthermore, genre-based studies allow researchers to begin investigating communicative practices in the workplace and in the classroom in a way that helps explain how such organizations sustain themselves through textual routines.

A genre-based approach potentially expands the scope of professional communication research. Rather than focusing on the micro-level and macro-level issues that are investigated in so much of our current research, investigations following the approach I have advocated will uncover a new set of issues to be examined. They will focus on unraveling the processes whereby communicative practices become routine in specific workplaces; they will help us understand how these routines are both typical and novel; and, they will provide insight into development of specialized practices, as well as practices that seem almost universal. Micro- and macro-level studies will continue to be valuable for pursuing specific lines of inquiry. New types of investigations, however, will emerge as researchers begin examining connections among the textually mediated social actions through which workplace organizations come to be constituted. We will be able to more thoroughly understand the relationship between genre routines and what Pare and Smart call "regularities in social roles" (1994, p. 149). We will better understand how communicators act as agents in their highly articulated organizations by investigating how their communicative practices repeat or vary social norms.

By studying workplace documents as typified communicative practices, we may also further extend the academic scope of professional communication scholarship. We will supplement the field's traditional research into processes for producing texts more effectively or efficiently with an expanded inquiry into how these documents order our social institutions. Such a move will connect professional communication scholarship to larger academic and social questions. Like Schryer (1993), we may begin to interrogate how our institutional genres make possible some actions while limiting or preventing others. Like Freedman & Smart (1997), we may investigate how communicative practices enable governmental institutions to establish and monitor policies that affect our ways of living). Like Giltrow (1994), we may examine how our genre habits come to mask certain types of knowledge in our efforts to create coherence across our social institutions. To expand the scope of professional communication studies and begin answering questions like these, we will need to begin accounting for the interplay of multiple communicative practices in the professional settings we study. No longer should we talk about the annual report, the memo, or the resume as if they existed autonomously. Instead, we should focus on the prior communicative practices from which annual reports, memos, and resumes emerge; we should examine the social practices through which these forms make sense for people who are negotiating work activities.

This approach to studying professional communication offers a way of understanding the role of texts in the social ordering of communication in organizations by drawing attention to patterns of repetition and variation in the habits of workplace professionals. Studies such as these provide insight into the contingencies of rhetorical practices in the workplace, helping us understand professional communication as a differentiated set of activities in time and space. However, we need additional studies into the many un-researched organizations where professionals communicate. Such studies will offer a better understanding of how our communicative practices arrived at the point they are today and how they can be remade in the future. The promise of such research is that we will gain insight into not only the texts professionals have used to negotiate their daily tasks, but also into the ways we have come to order our social institutions around the production and reception of those texts.

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References

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Debs, M. B. (1993). Corporate authority: Sponsoring rhetorical practices. In R. Spilka (Ed.), Writing in the workplace: New research perspectives. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

Forman, J., & Rymer, J. (1999). Defining the genre of the `case write-up.' Journal of Business Communication, 36, 103-133.

Freedman, A., & Smart, G. (1997). Navigating the current of economic policy: Written genres and the distribution of cognitive work at a financial institution. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 4, 238-255.

[Reference]

Giltrow, J. (1994). Genre and the pragmatic concept of background knowledge. In A. Freedman & P. Medway (Eds.), Genre and the new rhetoric. Basingstoke, UK: Burgess Science Press.

Hansen, C. J. (1996). Contextualizing technology and communication in a corporate setting. In A. H. Duin and C. J. Hansen (Eds.), Nonacademic writing: Social theory and technology. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Harrison, T. M. (1987). Frameworks for the study of writing in organizational contexts. Written Communication, 4, 3-23.

Odell, L., & Goswami, D. (1985). Writing in nonacademic settings. New York: Guilford Press.

Orlikowski, W J., & Yates, J. (1994). Genre repertoire: The structuring of communicative practices in organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 39, 541-574.

Pare, A., & Smart, G. (1994). Observing genres in action: Towards a research methodology. In A. Freedman & P Medway (Eds.), Genre and the new rhetoric. Basingstoke, UK: Burgess Science Press.

Rogers, P.S. (2000). CEO presentations in conjunction with earnings announcements: Extending the construct of organizational genre through the competing values profiling and user-needs analysis. Management Communication Quarterly, 13, 426-485.

Schryer, C. E (1993). Records as genre. Written Communication, 10, 200-234.

Spinuzzi, C. (2000, in press). Grappling with distributed usability: A cultural-historical examination of documentation genres over four decades. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 30, 4.

Van Nostrand, A. D. (1997). Fundable knowledge: The marketing of defense technology. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Yates, J. (1989). Control through communication: The rise of system in American management. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Zachry, M. (2000). Communicative practices and the workplace: A historical examination of genre development. Journal of Technical Writing & Communication, 30, 57-79.

[Author note]
Mark Zachry, Editor Utah State University, Logan

[Author note]
Address correspondence to the author, Utah State University, 3200 Old Main Hill, Logan UT 84321-3200 (e-mail: mzachry@english.usu.edu).