GENRE ANALYSIS IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESEARCH

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

Another area where genre analysis may prove helpful to researchers is in the area of technology mediated organizational transformation. This area has traditionally received considerable attention from IS scholars including some of the most influential voices in our discipline. We suggest that approaching the study of technology and change in contemporary organizations through the analytic lens of genre analysis can bring to the fore more complex and nuanced elements of the change process. Specifically, we submit that genre analysis can complement the more sophisticated conceptualizations of technology mediated organizational transformation, such as Orlikowski's situated change perspective (Orlikowski, 1996) or Ciborra's notion of improvisation in IS design and implementation (Ciborra, 1999). The explicit focus upon language to understand change is not without precedent. Colleagues in sociology have long considered "linguistic framing" as an important part of the analysis of organizational and institutional change processes (Scott, 2001).

CONCLUSION

This state of research review of genre analysis in information systems research has shown that authors in the IS field using genre analysis have gone a long way in helping to advance our understanding of the communicative actions taking place over IT-based systems. We have shown that the IT systems being examined are disparate, as are the types of communication involved. In each case, genre analysis was used appropriately, and as a result useful and informative insights could be drawn from the research that might have an impact on the users, managers and designers of such systems. By examining the IT artifact and the critical elements closely associated with the artifact in each paper reviewed, we feel that we have also shown that authors using genre analysis are contributing to the identity of the IS discipline, rather than detracting from it.

Genre analysis shows that genres can impact what gets said, by whom and when. For instance Firth (2002) showed that the introduction of the resume genre into an online community populated with business-oriented users had the effect of significantly increasing the use of the IT system, and influenced some users to contribute for their first time. It seems, then, that managing the types of genre used during communication can influence the levels of use and participation. Just as information systems can be objects of power and politics (Markus 1994), future research may be able to show that use of certain genres in certain contexts can provide the grist for such power and politics to be exerted. This position is also supported by Orlikowski and Yates (1994), who showed that the use of the ballot genre by a principal actor in the Common LISP project allowed that actor to close one chapter of the project and move onto the next.

In looking at the state of research using genre analysis into web pages, we find that authors have yet to suggest that IT can be designed to support certain genres. Future research might seek to explore the communicative effects of IT designed specifically for the web such as plug-ins for web browsers. A significant amount of work is performed by companies to develop and deploy such plug-ins. A good number of these provide a completely new way of communicating - such as providing the ability to view all sides of a 3-dimensional object. Genre analysis might be well placed to examine the impact these new communication genres have.