Genres of Organizational Communication
More and more organizations employ wikis. The reasons for doing so are plentiful, reaching from hopes of increasing productivity to beliefs in democratic collaboration. Whether or not wikis and other new media meet these hopes and beliefs remains an open question, particularly since wikis have only been around for a relatively short time. Besides the actual shortage on data, there is little genuine research on the topic, indeed.
The criteria with which organizations measure the efficiency and effectiveness of wikis are one way to answer the above question, of course. Yet, from a resarch perspective they are less interesting. What’s more interesting are the unintended and unintentional consequences that come with the use of wikis. For example, how do wikis change existing organizational structures?, does decision making pertain to wiki users?, and in what way do wikis influence work processes?
In our research, we first approach wikis in terms of genre analysis. More specifically, we distinguish several genres of organizational communication as they are produced and reproduced in wikis. For example, meeting minutes are a particular genre which is frequently found in wikis. Interestingly, this genre is produced and reproduced in exactly the way we know meeting minutes from, say, jot-down notes which are later distributed via e-mail; there is no sign of collaborative authorship or any other feature provided by wikis. Nonetheless, we expect to see the innvotion of wikis influence genres over time, much like e-mail changed several genres a little more than a decade ago.
Our next step is to compile a more comprehensive first look at genres of organizational communication. We’ll post the table here. Soon.