GENRE ANALYSIS IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESEARCH

Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application, 2003 by Firth, David R, Lawrence, Cameron

Benbasat and Zmud (2003) suggest that IT researchers using genre analysis can contribute to the identity of the IS discipline if they ensure their research pays close attention to both the IT artifact, which is "the application of IT to enable or support some task(s) embedded with a structure(s) that itself is embedded with a context(s)" (Benbasat and Zmud, 2003, pg. 186), and addresses one or more of the following four elements:

1. The managerial capabilities and operational practices involved in planning, designing, constructing and implementing IT artifacts.

2. The human behaviors reflected within, and induced through element 1 and the direct and indirect usage of these artifacts.

3. The managerial and operational practices for directing and facilitating IT artifact usage and evolution.

4. The impacts of these artifacts on the humans who interact with them4.

Benbasat and Zmud, (2003, pg. 188) feel that the identity of the IS research field has been poorly served by papers "that include neither the IT artifact nor at least one of the [four] elements". To see where information systems researchers using genre analysis stand in regard to examining the IT artifact and one or more of the four elements we developed Table 2 below. Here we highlight the IT artifact and which of the four elements was addressed by each genre analysis author in our review. The IT artifacts examined by the authors in our review were identified by a careful reading of the paper, and are usually specified in the "Methods" section. Most of the authors in our review identified which of the four elements specified by Benbasat and Zmud (2003) they were examining explicitly. Where this was not so, a complete reading of the papers allowed it to be easily identified from the text.

The table shows that our reviewed authors considered both the IT artifact and one of the four elements specified by Benbasat and Zmud (2003) in their research. The distribution of the four elements covered by our authors does bear mentioning. Of the sixteen papers reviewed, two looked at the managerial capabilities and operational practices involved in planning, designing, constructing and implementing IT artifacts, nine examined the human behaviors reflected within, and induced through both the planning, designing, constructing and implementing and the direct and indirect usage of these artifacts, four examined the managerial and operational practices for directing and facilitating IT artifact usage and evolution and only one looked at the impacts of these artifacts on the humans who interact with them.

Given that genres structure, shape, direct and organize communication, it is not surprising that the majority of the papers reviewed (56%, nine out of 16) examined the element related to the human behaviors reflected in and induced through use of the IT artifact. Further, since genre analysis is best suited to the examination of communication which occurs as a result of the use of an IT artifact, it is perhaps not surprising that there is little coverage of the capabilities and practices involved in planning, designing, constructing and implementing IT artifacts. This is not to suggest that understanding the types of genres in use could not influence the design of user interfaces - these are addressed by the managerial and operational practices for facilitating IT artifact usage. In fact, we suggest scholars concerned with the construction of open source artifacts such as Linux, may benefit from the inclusion of genre analysis into their research. Open source development communities are typically globally distributed communities whose primary form of communication is posting to various bulletin boards. This type of analysis may provide researchers with an interesting way to illuminate the complex social interactions that lead to the planning, designing and construction of these sophisticated technical artifacts. What is surprising, however, is that lack of coverage of the impact on humans as a consequence of IT artifact usage. For instance, if genre analysis can be used to automatically identify and classify documents, what impact does this have on a person's ability to conduct their work?