Genre Systems in Organizational Communication: A Study Review
This paper reviews and analyzes "Genre Systems: Structuring Interaction through Communicative Norms" by JoAnne Yates and Wanda Orlikowski (2008), MIT Sloan School of Management researchers. The study uses the Team Room collaborative application tool to examine how genre systems — sequences of interrelated communicative actions — structure team interaction across six dimensions: purpose, content, participants, form, time, and place. Three major findings are identified regarding meeting, collaborative authoring, and collaborative repository genre systems. The paper also considers implications of genre systems for professional development and organizational communication in an era of increasing telecommuting and computer-mediated collaboration.
- Introduction: Context for organizational communication and study overview
- Purpose of the Study: Genre systems and Team Room research objectives
- Research Design: Methodology using three telecom teams and Team Room
- Significance of the Study: Genre as organizing template for team interaction
- Results and Findings: Three major genre system findings from the study
- Conclusion and Professional Development Implications: Practical takeaways for practitioners and organizations
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper follows a clear, logical structure that mirrors the sections of the original study being reviewed, making it easy for readers to track the analysis against the source material.
- Direct quotations from Yates and Orlikowski are used strategically to ground the analysis in the authors' own language and avoid misrepresentation of key theoretical concepts such as "purpose" and "form."
- The numbered list of findings in the Results section accurately reproduces the three major conclusions of the study, preserving the precision of the original research without oversimplification.
Key academic technique demonstrated
This paper demonstrates the technique of structured article review: rather than simply summarizing a source, it organizes the review around the study's internal components — purpose, design, significance, and findings — and explicitly flags the study's theoretical contribution (genre systems as organizing structures for team communication). This approach shows readers how the study's methodology supports its conclusions.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a brief introduction contextualizing organizational communication, then moves through four analytical subsections: purpose, research design, significance, and results. A short conclusion addresses the practical relevance of telecommuting, followed by a focused section on professional development implications. The paper closes with a full reference list in APA format.
Introduction
Because all organizations are comprised of people, developing and sustaining effective organizational communications represents a timely enterprise for businesses of all sizes and types today (Miner, 2002). In their study, Genre Systems: Structuring Interaction through Communicative Norms, Yates and Orlikowski — professors and researchers at MIT's Sloan School of Management — describe the results of their innovative experiment using so-called "genre systems." These are sequences of interrelated communicative actions that teams routinely use to structure collaborative efforts, and the researchers used them to investigate improved organizational communication techniques. This paper provides an analysis of that study, followed by a summary of the research and its important findings.
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of the study by Yates and Orlikowski (2008) was to provide support for the proposition that genre systems can offer insights into how teams develop habitual ways of communicating within organizations. The researchers accomplished this by empirically drawing on data from a field study of teams using Team Room, a collaborative application tool provided by Lotus Development Corporation. According to these researchers, "Genre systems are generally important ways of organizing the temporal, spatial, and social dimensions of interaction. Genre systems can also be a particularly powerful means of structuring electronic interactions" (p. 14).
References
Bell, P., Davis, E.A., & Linn, M.C. (2004). Internet environments for science education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Day, D.V., Halpin, S.M., & Zaccaro, S.J. (2004). Leader development for transforming organizations: Growing leaders for tomorrow. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Dennis, C. & Harris, L. (2002). Marketing the e-business. London: Routledge.
Hoctor, J.J. & Thierauf, R.J. (2003). Smart business systems for the optimized organization. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Miner, J.B. (2002). Organizational behavior: Foundations, theories, and analyses. New York: Oxford University Press.
Whittaker, J. (2004). The cyberspace handbook. London: Routledge.
Yates, J. & Orlikowski, W. (2008, January). Genre systems: Structuring interaction through communicative norms. The Journal of Business Communication, 39(1), 13–16.
Zaccaro, S.J. & Klimoski, R.J. (2001). The nature of organizational leadership: Understanding the performance imperatives confronting today's leaders. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
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