 Genre Repertoire: Norms and Forms for Work and InteractionWanda J. Orlikowski and JoAnne Yates Working Paper Series from MIT Center for Coordination Science Abstract: Using the genre perspective, we studied the electronic communication of knowledge workers collaborating on a multi-year project and found that their work and interactions were mediated by the use of four genres (or shared types) of communication. Drawing on these findings, we develop the concept of genre repertoire to designate the set of genres enacted by groups, organizations, or communities to accomplish their work. We show that the establishment of a community's genre repertoire, which typically occurs at its formation, is a process that is largely implicit and rooted in members' prior experiences of working and interacting. Once established, a genre repertoire serves as a powerful social template for shaping ho, why, and with what effect members of a community interact to get their work done. While serving to institutionalize norms and forms of work and interaction, genre repertoires can and do change over time through members' response to project events, task demands, media capabilities, time pressures, and converging community norms. The concept of genre repertoire offers organizational research a powerful way of understanding mediated work practices and interaction norms, and hence how communication technologies may be associated with changes in the work and interaction of groups, organizations, or communities. Date: 1994-03 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wop:mitccs:166 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Paper Series from MIT Center for Coordination Science |
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