The concept of genre within the critical approach to information systems development

Information and Organization 11 (2001) 207–234 www.elsevier.com/locate/infoandorg

The concept of genre within the critical approach to information systems development Tero Pa¨iva¨rinta Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, University of Jyva¨skyla¨, PO Box 35, 40351 Jyva¨skyla¨, Finland

Abstract Ju¨rgen Habermas’ Critical Social Theory is regarded as a potential approach to information systems development (hereinafter referred to as the critical approach). However, the theoretical promise of this approach has not yet been operationalized in practice. This paper discusses the potential of the genre theory of organizational communication as a conceptual basis for doing so, using two studies that applied genre concepts to analyses and debates on document management. In particular, the paper illustrates the capability of genre concepts in responding to pleas for three types of rationality — communicative, emancipatory, and formal — considered fundamental to any method of information systems development pursuing the critical approach. Genre theory arguably provides a useful conceptual basis for structuring and analyzing organizational communication within the critical approach.  2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Communication; Critical approach; Critical Social Theory; Discourse; Genre of organizational communication; Genre repertoire; Genre system; Genre theory; Information systems development; Speech act

1. Introduction

Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts (Proverbs, c. 1000– 900 B.C., 4: 23).

E-mail address: [email protected] (T. Pa¨iva¨rinta). 1471-7727/01/$ - see front matter  2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 1 4 7 1 - 7 7 2 7 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 0 2 - 1

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1.1. Background and motivation The phenomenon of information systems development has emerged as a socioorganizational and, simultaneously, technological domain of interest. This requires novel development approaches capable of effectively combining the debate on socioorganizational aspects of work with practical information technology implementations (Hirschheim & Klein, 1989; Ngwenyama, 1991; Lyytinen, 1992; Dahlbom, 1997; Ciborra, 1998; Iivari, Hirschheim, & Klein, 1998). Iivari et al. (1998) have defined an approach to information systems development as: …goals, guiding principles, fundamental concepts, and principles for the ISD [information systems development] process that drive interpretations and actions in ISD (p. 166). One potential basis for the development of information systems and software, where these are seen as a means for organizational communication and action (Goldkuhl & Lyytinen, 1982; Dietz, Goldkuhl, Lind, & van Reijswoud, 1998), is Ju¨ rgen Habermas’ (1984, 1987) Critical Social Theory (Lyytinen & Klein, 1985; Hirschheim & Klein, 1989, 1994; Ngwenyama, 1991; Lyytinen, 1992; Hirschheim, Klein, & Lyytinen, 1995), hereinafter referred to as the critical approach.1 Fundamentally, the critical approach distinguishes between two dimensions of organizational activities for analytical purposes: work and social interaction (Klein & Hirschheim, 1993; the idea originates in Habermas, 1972). Work represents the systematic struggle that organizational ‘workers’ perform in response to inputs in order to achieve given ends enabling the organization to produce appropriate outputs and legitimate its existence in relation to its environment, i.e., to survive (Klein & Hirschheim, 1993). An information system should support the systematic means, structures, routines, and communication at work by utilizing appropriate information technology. Social interaction ideally involves all the relevant stakeholders of the work system under analysis. By utilizing experiences and other information gained from that work system, as well as from social interaction with the environment, the stakeholders of social interaction should communicate to reach mutual understanding about the desired features of the work system and to change it accordingly (Klein & Hirschheim, 1993; Fig. 1). In Fig. 1, communicationw refers to the exchange of meaningful information among the ‘workers’ within the work system in question. Information systems development represents a type of social interaction in which the ‘workers’, information

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Hirschheim and Klein (1989) (see also Hirschheim et al., 1995) have coined the concept of the ‘neohumanist paradigm’ of information systems development. This paradigm, they state, is best represented by ideas adopted from the Frankfurt School of critical theorists, especially Ju¨ rgen Habermas (Hirschheim et al., 1995, pp. 50, 91). However, the basic guidelines of Critical Social Theory can also be regarded as an approach to information systems development (according to the definition by Iivari et al., 1998). The basic goals, guiding principles, and principles for the systems development process related to the critical approach are outlined in Section 3.

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Fig. 1.

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Work and social interaction in the organization.

systems developers, managers, and other related stakeholders communicate to enact desired changes in the target work system by new applications of information technology to support communicationw.2 This communication included in social interaction is hereinafter referred to as communicationsi. Hence, comprehensible systems development approaches together with fundamental concepts capable of capturing the essential features of communicationw for use in supporting both communicationsi and the practical implementation of communicationw need to be developed; especially those fulfilling the goals, guiding principles, and principles for the systems development process required by the critical approach. Several such fundamental elements of the critical approach have been identified in the information systems literature. Nonetheless procedural guidelines for making practical applications and illustrative cases of the critical approach have continued to be lacking during the 1990s, thus dampening theoretical efforts (Lyytinen, 1992; Klein & Hirschheim, 1993; Hirschheim et al., 1995; Wilson, 1997). One reason for this can be found in the fact that the critical theorists have hitherto defined few explicit fundamental concepts, comprehensible to a number of different stakeholders, for modelling communicationw to be used in practical methods of systems development. 2 The assembly of the group of ‘workers’ at a particular moment depends on how the boundaries of the target work system are defined by the stakeholders of social interaction. In addition, one should note that information systems development and other types of social interaction in organizations appear also, in turn, to be work that can be debated and changed as such. Hence, the stakeholders participating in communicationsi can express change initiatives also on how communicationsi should be performed in a systems development initiative, e.g., by suggesting changes to system development methods and techniques, organization structure of development efforts, related communication, and computer-aided design tools. In such a case, we would need an additional layer of social interaction and communication in Fig. 1. The idea of ‘local method engineering’ (Tolvanen, 1998) represents an example of this kind of social interaction on a ‘higher level’ in the organization.

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The concept of the speech act in Habermas’ (1984) theoretical work, elaborated from Austin’s (1962) and Searle’s (1969) seminal writings, however, represents a pioneering attempt of this kind. The concept has been adopted in a few methods of information systems development — under the label of discourse analysis — aimed at designing office systems, computer-supported co-operative work, workflow management, and business process re-engineering. Reviews of the literature on speech act theory, on its role in the information systems field, and on related methods and exemplary system constructions have been presented by Aurama¨ ki and Lyytinen (1996), Ljungberg and Holm (1997), Dietz et al. (1998) and Iivari et al. (1998). However, with the exception of Dietz’s DEMO method (Dietz, 1994; van Reijswoud & Dietz, 1999), these speech-act-based methods and system constructions explicitly draw neither on Habermas’ work (Aurama¨ ki & Lyytinen, 1996), nor on the critical guidelines for information systems development. Rather, these methods and system constructions only more or less implicitly include the thematic of Habermas’ Critical Social Theory (Klein & Hirschheim, 1993; Iivari et al., 1998). Moreover, despite the significant theoretical foundations that have been laid, there have been, in general, few reports on empirical research and actual systems development efforts in organizations adopting the speech-act-based approach (Iivari et al., 1998; Schoop, 1999). One explanation for this might be the relatively complex conceptual basis of the methods that already exist (e.g., Aurama¨ ki, Lehtinen, & Lyytinen, 1988; Aurama¨ ki, Hirschheim, & Lyytinen, 1992). In addition to speech-act-based approach(es) and methods, a number of other approaches and experimental projects employing the critical approach to varying degrees, especially with respect to participation, have emerged since the 1970s. Klein and Hirschheim (1993), Hirschheim and Klein (1994), and Iivari et al. (1998) give representative examples and analyses of those. However, these more or less critical approaches and methods rarely model communicationw in a way that would allow it to be critically scrutinized in social interaction by all potential stakeholders and technically implemented on the basis of the resulting models. Rather, these approaches typically concentrate on discussing the socio-organizational conditions of the ‘worker’ on a general level, and his/her interaction, desires, attitudes, and required skills with regard to a particular kind of information system in a technological sense. On the other hand, the fundamental concepts of ‘mainstream’ information systems development — such as ‘data base’, ‘data class’, ‘data element’, ‘entity’, ‘information flow’, ‘object’, ‘use case’, ‘workflow’ — by their very nature mostly treat an information system plainly as an objective and technical domain of interest, thus neglecting the communicative and discursive orientations related to the system itself and its development process (Hirschheim et al., 1995; Hirschheim, Klein, & Lyytinen, 1996). Hence, room still exists for discussions on alternative fundamental concepts with which to conceptualize organizational communicationw as a basis for social interaction and communicationsi aiming at information systems development within the critical approach. Preferably, these concepts should have solid theoretical foundations.

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1.2. Purpose of the paper An interesting theoretical foundation potentially responding to the call described above is the genre theory of organizational communication (Yates & Orlikowski, 1992; Orlikowski & Yates, 1994). In the 1990s, increasing attention was directed towards genre theory in the information systems field and many researchers seem to believe in the potential of genre theory as a conceptual aid in research on emerging types of information systems.3 However, the adoption of genre theory in promoting the methodical development of information systems has hitherto been little scrutinized in general, let alone in the light of the critical approach. The rare discussions on the use of genre concepts as a basis for practical systems analysis and development include the general discussion on structured document systems by Levy (1993), insight into human–computer interaction by Brown and Duguid (1994), preliminary suggestions in the field of computer-supported collaborative work by Orlikowski and Yates (1998), and works on enterprise document management by Tyrva¨ inen and Pa¨ iva¨ rinta (1999), and Karjalainen, Pa¨ iva¨ rinta, Tyrva¨ inen, and Rajala (2000). Thus room still exists for additional theoretical and practical work on the potential role of genre concepts in approaches and methods relating to information systems development. The research question addressed in this paper is: Would the fundamental concepts residing in the genre theory of organizational communication be capable of supporting the analysis of communicationw, and, furthermore, promote the kinds of social interaction and communicationsi that aim at information systems development according to the goals, guiding principles, and principles for the development process identified with the critical approach? That is, could the critical approach be operationalized towards practical systems development by the genre concepts? This article attempts to answer this question by a theoretical discussion in which genre theory is viewed under eight maxims that the author identified as conforming

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Thus far, genre theory has been introduced and applied in the information systems field most significantly by Wanda Orlikowski and JoAnne Yates (Yates, 1989; Yates & Orlikowski, 1992; Orlikowski & Yates, 1994, 1998; Yates, Orlikowski, & Okamura, 1995, 1999; Yates, Orlikowski, & Rennecker, 1997). Their work draws considerably on Anthony Giddens’ structuration theory (Giddens, 1984), and their empirical articles focus on computer-supported collaborative work. Orlikowski and Yates have highlighted how explicit and implicit communicative genres in the organization represent a duality of organizational structure in which these genres simultaneously enable the stakeholders to develop new forms of communication based on their earlier collaboration with a shared set of concepts and communicative patterns while, on the other hand, simultaneously constraining them to think in these traditional terms and patterns. In addition to the seminal work of Yates and Orlikowski, other interesting sources of genre-based studies on information systems include the proceedings of the annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences which included a minitrack called ‘Genre/s in digital documents’ on its agenda in 1997–2000 (Sprague 1997, 1998) and several individual pieces of research in the 1990s (Levy, 1993; Brown & Duguid, 1994; Dillon & Vaughan, 1997; Bergquist & Ljungberg, 1998; Svensson, 1998; Eriksen & Ihlstro¨ m, 1999; Johannesson & Wallstro¨ m, 1999).

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to the critical approach by reviewing the information systems literature. The maxims are grounded on previous theoretical work by scholars who have significantly promoted Habermas’ Critical Social Theory within the field of information systems (Lyytinen & Klein, 1985; Hirschheim & Klein 1989, 1994; Ngwenyama, 1991; Klein & Hirschheim 1991, 1993; Lyytinen, 1992; Hirschheim et al., 1995; Ngwenyama & Lee, 1997). I argue that the concept of genre has the potential to provide a useful conceptual means of discerning and modelling communicationw and, this way, promoting a critical orientation in systems development communicationsi among the stakeholders, thereby operationalizing the critical approach towards practice. These ideas are also illustrated by my experience of involvement in two genre-based practical studies (Tyrva¨ inen & Pa¨ iva¨ rinta, 1999; Karjalainen et al., 2000). In these studies, genre-based thinking was applied to the analysis and development of document management. The maxims and theoretical discussion are organized under three types of rationality — communicative, emancipatory, and formal — all regarded as fundamental to any methodical practice pursuing the critical approach (Klein & Hirschheim, 1991). In the remainder of the paper, Section 2 introduces the fundamental concepts of the genre theory of organizational communication. Section 3 states the maxims of the critical approach that identified in the relevant information systems literature. Section 4 discusses genre theory in the light of the maxims and illustrates this discussion with reference to my experience gained from participation in two genrebased practical studies on document management. The discussion also briefly compares speech-act-based discourse analysis with the genre-based approach. Section 5 considers the possible shortcomings of the genre-based critical approach and concludes with suggestions for further research.

2. Fundamental concepts of genre theory The notion of genre has its roots in antiquity, in the Greek word genos meaning ‘race’, ‘kind’, ‘sort’, or ‘class’ (Zimmerman, 1994). In the early 1950s, Mikhail Bakhtin (1952/53) formulated the concept of speech genre for the purpose of categorizing and analyzing communicative actions, “relatively stable types of …[oral and written] utterances” (p. 60), in several areas of human activity. Bakhtin also included “the fairly variegated repertoire of business documents” (p. 60) in his examples of speech genres. In this sense, he could be considered as the ‘father’ of the idea of applying the concept of genre to categorizing and analyzing human communication in the organization and other domains of everyday life. Yates and Orlikowski (1992), drawing mainly on Miller’s (1984) work on rhetorical genres, introduced the concept of the genre of organizational communication and defined it as a typified and recurrent communicative action that can be identified primarily by its substance and, to some extent, by its form (Yates & Orlikowski, 1992). The substance, or communicative purpose(s), of a genre has to be shared within a community by more than one human being (Yates & Orlikowski, 1992; see also Swales, 1990; Bazerman, 1994). It refers to social motives, themes and topics

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expressed in a recurrent communicative context (Yates & Orlikowski, 1992; also Bazerman, 1994; Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995). The appropriate form(s) of a genre — including structural features, one or more communication media, and a symbol system to represent information — should also be commonly recognized within the community (Yates & Orlikowski, 1992). The range of people within which a genre is comprehended is referred to as the normative scope of the genre (Yates & Orlikowski, 1992). The normative scope can vary from genres specific to an intraorganizational group or subculture, e.g. ‘Diary’ produced and used by the shifts running a paper machine in a Finnish papermill (Kovalainen, Robinson, & Aurama¨ ki, 1998),4 to internationally recognized abstract genres such as the ‘memo’ or ‘business letter’ (Yates & Orlikowski, 1992). A communicative genre should be distinguished from the medium of communication (Yates & Orlikowski, 1992); for instance, a fax or an e-mail are not good examples of communicative genres (as generally understood), whereas a hotel reservation or an invitation to a meeting, which can be mediated by fax or electronic mail, are. However, the media may play an important role in the form of a genre and the introduction of new media and information technology may affect genres (Yates, 1989; Yates & Orlikowski, 1992). Changes in a genre may also emerge along with the institutionalization of organizational practices and with individual actions, whether explicit or implicit, taken to change the norms and rules governing the use of the genre in communication (Yates & Orlikowski, 1992; Yates, Orlikowski, & Okamura, 1999). This doctrine embodies the modern conception of genre in general (also Miller, 1984; Swales, 1990; Bazerman, 1994; Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995; Forman & Rymer, 1999; Louhiala-Salminen, 1999), contradicting an earlier viewpoint that considered genres as stable types of utterance. In general, the recognition of genres in communities exemplifies how the “social construction of reality” (Berger & Luckmann, 1966) emerges in the fields of organizational communication and information systems. Bazerman (1994) introduced the concept of systems of genre (hereinafter genre system) stating that a genre system consists of “interrelated genres that interact with each other in specific settings” (p. 97). A set of genres identified for the purposes of conducting a project, e.g. ‘project proposal’, ‘project plan’, ‘Gantt-chart’, ‘project budget’, ‘project meeting’, ‘memo of a project meeting’, and ‘project report’, may illustrate the idea of a genre system. A genre system constitutes a wider, recurrent, communicative process shared within the community in question. The genre repertoire of a community (an organization, for example) “indicates its established communicative practices” (Orlikowski & Yates, 1994, p. 546). Following changes in individual genres and genre systems, a genre repertoire will change over time either implicitly or explicitly (Yates et al., 1999). Implicit change occurs along 4

Although Kovalainen et al. (1998) do not explicitly use the concept of genre, they highlight how a novel Lotus Notes-based ‘Diary’ about problems and incidents during work shifts running a paper machine was replacing previous forms, even affecting some purposes, of communicationw among the maintenance staff. This ‘Diary’ thus exemplifies a genre of organizational communication within the normative scope of a highly specialized and limited group of people.

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with everyday communicationw, either reinforcing existing genres or somehow contradicting their enacted use. Explicit development may include the active adoption of new genres and genre systems or alteration of existing ones achieved through communicationsi. Changes may emerge through trial-and-error, by learning from other communities, or actively creating alternative communicative routines (Yates et al., 1999). Furthermore, the explicit analysis and development of an organization’s genre repertoire have been considered useful in comprehending the introductions, uses, and influences of new media in organizations (for more a detailed discussion on genre repertoires and change in them, see Orlikowski & Yates, 1994; Yates, Orlikowski, & Okamura 1995, 1999).

3. The critical approach to information systems development 3.1. Rationality concepts shedding light on the critical approach This section aims at providing a structured basis for discussing genre theory in the light of the critical approach. Any goal, principle, or development initiative and related communicationsi is guided by an idea of rationality. I have chosen for further discussion the rationality concepts proposed by two scholars who have promoted critical social theory in information systems development (Klein & Hirschheim, 1991) as a basis for identifying and organizing the goals and principles of the critical approach. Klein and Hirschheim (1991; see also Hirschheim & Klein, 1989; Klein & Hirschheim, 1993) have declared three types of rationalities equally essential in the critical orientation to information systems development:5 1. Communicative rationality means that the stakeholders participating in communicationsi seek mutual and valid understanding of work and communicationw, which can be supported by an information system. The stakeholders should take into account their divergent knowledge and opinions. The concept was elaborated from Habermas’ concept of knowledge interest in mutual understanding (Habermas, 1984). 2. Emancipatory rationality means that the stakeholders seek to identify psychological, physical, and social barriers to rational communicationw&si6 and to define the conditions that help overcome these barriers “toward a state of justice, freedom, 5 One should note that also other types of rationality orientations directing human actions exist; for example, strategic, dramaturgical, and normatively regulated orientations (Habermas, 1984; Hirschheim et al., 1996, pp. 10–11). Since the purpose of this paper is to discuss how the suggested concepts fulfil the ideal types of rationality recommended and promoted by the critical approach, rather than to discuss how they would relate to less ideal ones, any discussion of genre concepts in relation to other rationality types remains to be conducted elsewhere. 6 Klein and Hirschheim (1991) do not explicitly distinguish between communicationw and communicationsi in their discussion of the rationality concepts. However, as they state elsewhere (Klein & Hirschheim, 1993), the analytical separation of work and social interaction is useful. Hence, to clarify the ensuing discussion, I would draw a distinction between these types of organizational communication.

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and material well-being of all”. This rationality concept was elaborated from Habermas’ concept of knowledge interest in emancipation (Habermas, 1984; the citation from Klein & Hirschheim, 1993, p. 270). 3. Formal rationality means that the stakeholders of social interaction seek an optimal balance of means, ends, and consequences of action within a developing information system concerning communicationw, as well as in the work effort aiming at changing that system in practice. This concept was elaborated from Habermas’ technical knowledge interest and Weber’s theory of organization (Weber, 1947; Habermas, 1984). Formal rationality is pursued after a mutual and valid understanding of the desired features of the system and of practical means of realising those features (within tolerable emancipatory conditions) is achieved. In the following outline of Critical Social Theory in the information systems literature, the basic goals and principles of the critical approach are expressed in the form of eight maxims (Table 1) categorized according to the above-mentioned rationality concepts. I drew the maxims mainly on the theoretical work accumulated since the 1980s by those scholars who have most prominently promoted Habermas’ Critical Table 1 Eight maxims for the critical approach Communicative rationality

Emancipatory rationality

Formal rationality

(1) Thou shalt critically debate the social conditions, goals for, and purposes of an information system, and reach mutual understanding, in communicationsi before the technological implementation of communicationw. (4) Thou shalt respect thy fellow stakeholder by letting him or her freely and equally participate in the continuous critical debate: communicationsi should thus pursue the ideal speech situation in itself. (6) Thou shalt have practical means for analysis and design, focusing on change.

(2) Thou shalt be aware of the fact that data in communicationw can be contextually comprehended by a person observing that data in his or her lifeworld.

(5) Thou shalt seek emancipation of thyself and thy fellow stakeholder, and, simultaneously, consider the good of the whole organization (and society): the target system should aim at universally valid communicationw. (7) Thou shalt be aware of potential desired and undesired impacts of a technological implementation.

(3) Thou shalt have institutional tools for problem finding and formulation about and within the boundaries of the target system for communicationw.

(8) Thou shalt be critically self-reflective on the received results of, as well as the detailed methods used for, information systems development.

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Social Theory within the discipline of information systems (Lyytinen & Klein, 1985; Hirschheim & Klein 1989, 1994; Ngwenyama, 1991; Klein & Hirschheim 1991, 1993; Lyytinen, 1992; Hirschheim et al., 1995; Ngwenyama & Lee, 1997). The maxims focus on information systems development at the level of a development project or process.7 3.2. Maxims for communicative rationality Social conditions and the technological implementation of an information system are comprehended in different ways (Hirschheim & Klein, 1989; Hirschheim et al., 1995). Social conditions, relationships and norms are continuously structured and developed through critical social debate, i.e. communicationsi with a critical orientation, whereas the technological implementation of the information system in question may occasionally be (re)constructed in an ‘engineering’ way by following needs identified in communicationsi (Ngwenyama, 1991; Hirschheim et al., 1995). Decisions on technological implementations for communicationw must submit to the needs and requirements identified and enacted during communicationsi. Maxim 1. Thou shalt critically debate the social conditions, goals for, and purposes of an information system, and reach mutual understanding, in communicationsi before the technological implementation of communicationw. Although the substance of communicationw can be socially constructed and shared — even reified — in a community (Berger & Luckmann, 1966), some meanings may also be the result of contextual interpretation by a person observing the data in his or her own lifeworld (Kent, 1978; Ngwenyama, 1991). In addition to individual contextualization in interpreting communicative information at work, varying socially enacted norms and more or less commonly understood meanings exist at different organizational levels and within various groups of people, thereby attaching organizational contextuality to interpretations of data processed in an information system (Ngwenyama & Lee, 1997). Maxim 2. Thou shalt be aware of the fact that data in communicationw can be contextually comprehended by a person observing that data in his or her lifeworld. Critical systems thinking in general problematizes the issue of defining the system’s boundaries and recognizes that the choices as to the relevant demarcation and stakeholders of the target system are, ultimately, political and arbitrary by their very nature (Churchman, 1979; Ulrich, 1983; Midgley, 1996). Furthermore, separate stakeholders most probably have different opinions and preferences on what constitute important 7 In addition to the level of a single development project or process, Klein and Hirschheim (1993) state that critical information systems development should also suggest improvements in the institutional environment of the organization (local community and society) and on the organizational policy level. These levels related to information systems development, however, fall outside the scope of this paper.

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and interesting targets for improvements within the system’s boundaries. Hence, institutional tools to promote mutual understanding of relevant system development problems among all stakeholders are needed (Hirschheim et al., 1995). Maxim 3. Thou shalt have institutional tools for problem finding and formulation about and within the boundaries of the target system for communicationw. 3.3. Maxims for emancipatory rationality Systems development must pursue the “ideal speech situation” (Habermas, 1984), i.e. those conditions in which communicationsi would be open to all stakeholders willing to participate; all stakeholders having an equal opportunity to raise issues, to question what the others have said, and to give, accept and refuse proposals for concrete actions (Ngwenyama, 1991; Klein & Hirschheim, 1993; Hirschheim & Klein, 1994; Hirschheim et al. 1995, 1996). However, to avoid artificial premises possibly stated subjectively, e.g. by the managers or system developers, and thus implicitly steering the ‘critical’ discourse towards their view, there exists the need for a set of unquestionable values within the development effort from which neither system developers nor other stakeholders would wish to depart. This refers to Lewis’ (1947) concept of ‘Tao’, which emphasizes the need to identify such unquestionable norms of human life to act as guidelines for any technological development initiative in an organization or society. The ‘Tao’ of the critical approach resides in a critical but constructive communicationsi during which all the stakeholders respect each other enough to commit themselves personally to pursue the ambitious principles of the ideal speech situation.8 Without this commitment, the development approach in question will be something other than critical in the sense used in this article. Maxim 4. Thou shalt respect thy fellow stakeholder by letting him or her freely and equally participate in the continuous critical debate: communicationsi should thus pursue the ideal speech situation in itself. Communicationsi has to consider and decide what aspects of both the individual ‘good’ and ‘common good’ of the whole organization (Ngwenyama, 1991) are to be concretized in the target system for communicationw. The target system should avoid biased and distorted communicationw, e.g., delusions, misunderstandings or undesirable secondary use of recorded data (see also Smith, Milberg, & Burke, 1996;

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The author cannot honestly state that he himself has yet reached the level of maturity required to personally fulfil the demands of these principles in all the communicative situations in which his own work is discussed and criticized. Hence, there is a chance that also other people in a similar position exist, as well as people who neither believe in nor are committed to these ideals in the first place. That is the reason why the verb pursue is used here. Whether the critical approach is possible or worth trying thus depends on the personal commitment of the stakeholders (or, at least, a reasonable proportion of them) to bring a critical orientation to communicationsi.

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Ngwenyama & Lee, 1997) along with other natural, external and psychological barriers hindering the aspiration toward rational and honest communication at work (Hirschheim & Klein, 1994; Hirschheim et al., 1995). Hence, communicationw should be planned to fulfil the demands of universal validity claims (Habermas, 1984) as far as possible: i.e. communicationw should be comprehensible, honest, accurate, and socially appropriate with respect to all the ‘workers’ in question (Hirschheim et al., 1996, p. 40).9 Information systems development has to be value-laden towards improvements in human conditions (Ngwenyama, 1991). The critical approach also assumes the existence of a ‘truth’ toward the fulfilment, of which human conditions have to be oriented, and people ‘emancipated’, and which is attainable by critical and open communicationsi (Hirschheim & Klein, 1994; Hirschheim et al., 1995). Maxim 5. Thou shalt seek emancipation of thyself and thy fellow stakeholder, and, simultaneously, consider the good of the whole organization (and society): the target system should aim at universally valid communicationw. 3.4. Maxims for formal rationality In the logical and physical design for the implementation of an information system, the reconstructions and changes desired in technology, language and organizational arrangements have to be applicable to practice in a flexible way (Hirschheim et al., 1995). “Methods must be practice oriented focusing on change” (Ngwenyama, 1991, p. 272). Hence means-oriented formal rationality must be incorporated in any method that strives to be part of the critical approach (Klein & Hirschheim, 1991). Maxim 6. Thou shalt have practical means for analysis and design, focusing on change. The potential impacts of systems development initiatives on the organizational arrangements and environment have to be anticipated in order to mitigate those that are unwanted (Hirschheim et al., 1995). In this sense, a method incorporating the critical approach should promote ends-oriented formal rationality, i.e. calculating between alternative ends for the target system (Klein & Hirschheim, 1991). Maxim 7. Thou shalt be aware of potential desired and undesired impacts of a technological implementation. The actual performance of a technological implementation with regard to control and prediction, mutual understanding, and emancipation in the workplace has to be actively monitored via subsequent communicationsi (Hirschheim et al., 1995).

9 Of course, these demands concern also communicationsi, and their fulfilment can be evaluated through ‘higher level’ communicationsi.

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Accordingly, the changes needed in technology, language, and organizational arrangements for communicationw, as well as the systems development methods and practices used in previous communicationsi, have once again to be critically debated (Ngwenyama, 1991): that is, there is a need actively to balance means-oriented formal rationality against ends-oriented formal rationality with regard to the actual outcomes of a given development effort (Klein & Hirschheim, 1991). Maxim 8. Thou shalt be critically self-reflective on the received results of, as well as the detailed methods used for, information systems development.

4. Discussion: operationalizing the critical approach by the fundamental concepts of genre theory This section discusses the value of genre concepts in operationalizing the critical approach towards the methods and practices of information systems development. The discussion is organized according to the rationality concepts and maxims of the critical approach identified in the previous section. In part, the discussion originates in my personal involvement in two practical genre-based studies on enterprise document management (Tyrva¨ inen & Pa¨ iva¨ rinta, 1999; Karjalainen et al., 2000), which are briefly outlined in Appendix A. Finally, the genre-based approach is compared with that of speech-act-based discourse analysis. 4.1. Genre theory in the light of communicative rationality

Maxim 1. Thou shalt critically debate the social conditions, goals for, and purposes of an information system, and reach mutual understanding, in communicationsi before the technological implementation of communicationw The use of genre concepts brings on the dual nature of the information involved in communicationw (Brown & Duguid, 1994). On the one hand, genre theory denotes the socially enacted (still continuously changing) purposes associated with data utilised or produced by humans in socio-organizational contexts. On the other hand, genre concepts are able to capture the technological capabilities needed for the processing and storage, as well as the actual representation, i.e. the specific genre form(s), of the data. Karjalainen et al. (2000) report an in-depth analysis of a comprehensive genre repertoire in an organization with 80 employees. The analysis aimed at defining the requirements for developing an enterprise document management system. About half of the employees participated in the analysis process, which resulted in the identification of 850 genres. This explicit and comprehensive genre repertoire revealed a need to standardize a proportion of organizational communicationw instead of simply allowing individual practices to continue, and, at the same time, provided detailed

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foci (i.e., the genres) for the discussion on standardization and the technologies through which individual genres could be implemented. The need for standardization especially concerned extensively used documents and recurrent types of other communicationw with customers. However, the analysis also revealed the political nature of this development work, especially technological standardization, to the stakeholders: not only did almost all the participants recognize the need for standardization, they also found that there should be broad participation in the standardization process. Neither managers nor information system developers could have the sole right to decide on these technological standards. Hence, the extrapolated genres led to a more critical communicationsi on standardization and the technological implementation, thereby creating a detailed organizational terminology with which to debate and decide these issues genre by genre. In Tyrva¨ inen and Pa¨ iva¨ rinta (1999), three information system developers selected and scrutinized thoroughly 11 (out of the 524 earlier identified) genres of an industrial corporation. In this study, the identification and analysis of genres also facilitated discussion on the social purposes of the genres, and provided a conceptual foundation for debating their technological implementations, within a single stakeholder group. All in all, genre concepts have the potential to bridge the gap between the social and technological aspects of information systems development. This promotes communicative rationality in communicationsi among technologically oriented information systems developers, managers, and employees operating at the grass-roots level of the organization. By identifying genres, the employees producing or using information at work are able to participate in communicationsi on the technological implementation of information systems, and look critically in detail at technological options in the light of their everyday socio-organizational purposes and goals — as these are embedded in genres of communicationw. Maxim 2. Thou shalt be aware of the fact that data in communicationw can be contextually comprehended by a person observing that data in his or her lifeworld. Genres vary in normative scope (Yates & Orlikowski, 1992). In Tyrva¨ inen and Pa¨ iva¨ rinta (1999), the three system developers realized that they were not able to discuss several genres, despite the fact that they were expected to consider technological implementations for those genres. Hence, these system developers were not within the normative scope of several genres of communicationw to be developed. The genre repertoire of the other target organization (Karjalainen et al., 2000) included genres internal to a particular group of experts as well as genres shared with varying numbers of other groups and external stakeholders. People using particular genres at work were capable of expressing their individual viewpoints, and of discussing common purposes and shared meanings of these pieces of information. For instance, one expert on customers’ computing problems typically gave his advice by phone, a second one used e-mail, whereas a third one preferred to provide documented advice shared through the Web. After becoming aware that the communicative genre of ‘customer consultation’ exists (Appendix A), these experts were now able to discuss whether this advice on every significant problem should be documented and thus

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shared so that, in addition to providing direct advice to individual customers, they would be able to check whether one of their colleagues had already solved a similar problem before. Hence, by identifying a common name for this very basic act of communicationw these ‘workers’ could now agree on a new and shared substance for this genre in addition to their previous personal ways communicating the data in question directly to the customer. Once made explicit, genre repertoires can thus help create awareness of the contextuality and limited normative scope of communicationw among the stakeholders. This probably prevents possible oversimplification by ‘outsider’ stakeholders (who, nonetheless, may bear significant responsibilities in the development process) concerning communicative purposes and the need to process and utilize the data in question. Most importantly, however, genres can provide a conceptual basis for revealing diverging interpretations of certain data among the stakeholders, and for discovering new shared substances for that data. Maxim 3. Thou shalt have institutional tools for problem finding and formulation about and within the boundaries of the target system for communicationw. The notion of normative scope implies that an information system does not always need to be debated by a great number of people. Instead, a group of people may discuss its internal purposes and technological needs across many genres and genre systems, within the same normative scope. On the other hand, a genre-based analysis is able to reveal that widely shared genres must be discussed, enacted, and standardized among a wide number of stakeholders. The identification and analysis of genres and genre systems thus increases communicative rationality in defining the boundaries of the information system in question, by enhancing mutual understanding of who can and should participate in communicationsi about the system in the first place and of what types of communicationw lie within those boundaries. At the target organization of Tyrva¨ inen and Pa¨ iva¨ rinta (1999), the participating system developers stated that genre-based thinking helped them to understand their on-going development efforts from several viewpoints. Moreover, they stated that a common terminology for communicationsi between system developers and their customers in the organization usually has to be created at the outset of a development project, and that an explicit genre repertoire of communicationw has the potential to provide a useful conceptual ground for this, thereby promoting the formulation of the needs and problems of systems development. In Tyrva¨ inen and Pa¨ iva¨ rinta (1999) and Karjalainen et al. (2000), the genre-based analyses revealed hundreds of genres, surprising the system developers in those organizations. Karjalainen et al. (2000) reported that a significant number of document management problems in their target organization (identified before the genrebased analysis) were now identified with particular genres and considered as resolvable by using information technologies already present in the organization. However, the genre repertoire was also seen as a useful basis for identifying technological needs for the document management system in the future. A genre-based approach to analyzing communicationw thus can facilitate com-

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municative rationality in communicationsi with regard to problem finding and formulation, as problems and challenges which have been recognized can be focused, attached to, and discussed with regard to the numerous genres identified at a detailed level. Furthermore, technological solutions and constraints familiar with system developers, even managerial problems denoted by the management, can be viewed in the light of the genre repertoire of communicationw identified by the employees. Hence, identified genres and genre systems can be regarded as socially constructed ‘boundary objects’ (Star & Griesemer, 1989; Brown & Duguid, 1994) which help stakeholders of systems development with different social and cultural backgrounds (such as managers, system developers, and varying classes of ‘workers’) to discuss issues with each other in a comprehensible way. 4.2. Genre theory in light of emancipatory rationality

Maxim 4. Thou shalt respect thy fellow stakeholder by letting him or her freely and equally participate in the continuous critical debate: communicationsi should thus pursue the ideal speech situation in itself. Nowadays, many managers and system developers use broad and abstract concepts such as ‘business processes’ (Hammer & Champy, 1993), ‘information technology infrastructures’ (Broadbent & Weill, 1997), or ‘shared information systems’ (Pawlowski, Robey, & Raven, 2000), with rather vague notions in mind of the actual context-specific communicationw to be processed in the related applications. Topdown, managerial and technological, viewpoints and concepts thus often dominate the debate and decision-making on information systems. Genre theory provides a conceptual aid to facilitate bottom-up argumentation and sense making in communicationsi about information systems apart from plain managerial or technological concepts. Identified genres can steer communicationsi away from broad and abstract ideas towards topics that the actual users and producers of the information know and have something to say about. In Tyrva¨ inen and Pa¨ iva¨ rinta (1999), the participating information systems developers found that alone they were incapable of deciding on the technological implementations of the genres without help from people actually producing and using that particular information. At the organization studied by Karjalainen et al. (2000), the genre repertoire served as a conceptual base for relevant and focused arguments on further developments in document management by the employees communicating through particular genres at work. Whereas the broad, managerially and technologically oriented, topics are unlikely to be discussed continuously by many people, focused communicationsi on particular genres and genre systems can more easily be started in a timely manner. A genre-based approach will thus probably support a number of specific debates on various detailed topics (i.e. genres and genre systems), in this way promoting the continuous debate in general. This can promote emancipatory rationality by creating awareness among managers and information systems developers as to the fact that the wide participation of the ‘worker’ as an equal and

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necessary partner is needed in the first place, and by providing conceptual means for the ‘worker’ to effectively participate in the debate. A genre-based approach can thus increase the motivation of the stakeholders to pursue the principles of the ideal speech situation in communicationsi. Maxim 5. Thou shalt seek emancipation of thyself and thy fellow stakeholder, and, simultaneously, consider the good of the whole organization (and society): the target system should aim at universally valid communicationw. The genre-based analyses of communicationw revealed individual viewpoints held by the participants concerning their technological preferences in implementing a genre (Tyrva¨ inen & Pa¨ iva¨ rinta, 1999; Karjalainen et al., 2000). However, a comprehensive and explicit genre repertoire of communicationw can, in addition, offer a means for informed argumentation also to those in charge of holistically coordinating development efforts in information systems; e.g. to see areas of technological standardization adding justifiable value in common to the organization as a whole. The critical and genre-based approach denotes that persons using or producing certain types of information should be regarded as essential stakeholders to be respected and listened to in information systems development concerning their work. At the very least, communicationsi that is based on identified genres of communicationw provides a necessary counterpoint to any top-down approach to information systems development by offering conceptual means to individual ‘workers’ to discuss information systems implementations relevant to them, thus promoting emancipatory rationality in the implementation of communicationw — without forgetting the emancipation of those responsible for the coordination and implementation of information technology and organizational development from a holistic viewpoint. A genre repertoire of communicationw also helps conceptualize the ways, rules, and practices of communication among the ‘workers’, which each of those ‘workers’ can trust with regard to the universal validity claims. The aspects of universal validity in communicationw — comprehensibility, veracity, accuracy, and social appropriateness — can be debated genre by genre in communicationsi in a focused way, as necessary. 4.3. Genre theory and formal rationality

Maxim 6. Thou shalt have practical means for analysis and design, focusing on change. A genre-based analysis of communicationw is capable of providing a way of seeking focused means for developing information systems for separate genres and genre systems. In Karjalainen et al. (2000), the genre-based analysis provoked discussion about standardizing a number of previously implicitly and heterogeneously ‘managed’ genres, whereas to another set of genres there was no need for standardization at the moment. The genre repertoire also revealed the need to vary the technological

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and organizational means used to implement separate genres and genre systems in general. Change needed in the implementation of individual genres and genre systems can be analyzed separately, without thinking of change needed at a broad level only (for instance, in business processes, technological infrastructures, and shared information systems). In this sense, a genre-based approach can promote meansoriented formal rationality. Maxim 7. Thou shalt be aware of potential desired and undesired impacts of a technological implementation. Since an extrapolated genre repertoire has the potential to describe communicationw in an organization at a detailed level, it can also serve as a basis for anticipating the effects of planned changes in information technology in relation to communicationw. The organizational effects of the technological implementation of a few genres at a time are likely to be reasonably identified, whereas the already mentioned broad topics are often discussed at an abstract level thereby hindering the detailed identification of their potential impact on different stakeholders. In the target organization of Karjalainen et al. (2000), the documented genre repertoire, with a number of properties analyzed for each genre, offers a comprehensive but detailed tool to anticipate desired and undesired effects of development efforts on different genres and their stakeholders: for instance, the effects of changing from one software package to another. The genre-based approach thus has the potential to promote ends-oriented formal rationality. Maxim 8. Thou shalt be critically self-reflective on the received results of and methods used for information systems development. The results of a development initiative can be thoroughly discussed in the light of the genres and their stakeholders affected by a new technological implementation. For example, in the target organization of Karjalainen et al. (2000), the consequences of an electronic document management system could now be identified with regard to one genre and genre system together with the related stakeholders at a time instead of organization-wide discussions on large development efforts, which are often based on ambiguous and shallow notions of ‘organizational needs’. At the level of method engineering and reconsideration (see Brinkkemper, 1996), the explicit identification of genres of communicationw as a conceptual basis for information systems development can also promote a debate leading to an improvement or change in a particular method of development (aimed at providing guidelines for communicationsi on a more detailed and technical level). For instance, the stakeholders involved in communicationsi may decide that the modeling of certain genres and genre systems requires object-oriented techniques, that other genres in turn require relational data models, and that a third set of genres should be technically modelled by techniques oriented towards computer-supported collaborative work.

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4.4. Comparison of the genre-based approach with that of speech-act-based discourse analysis In speech-act-based discourse analysis aimed at information systems development, the concepts of speech act and discourse form the foundation for modeling communicationw (Aurama¨ ki et al. 1988, 1992; Johannesson, 1995). A speech act represents the “smallest meaningful unit of communication[w]” whereas a discourse consists of “a sequence of speech acts” (Aurama¨ ki et al., 1992, p. 499). Speech acts can be categorized by means of at least four different taxonomies depending on the particular speech act theory used; Aurama¨ ki and Lyytinen (1996) provide a concise review of the literature on speech act theories and their role in information systems development methods. For instance, Searlean speech act theory highlights communicative intentions held by the speaker of an utterance (illocutionary acts), whereas Habermas considers the effects that the utterance has on both the receiver and speaker him/herself (perlocutionary acts) (Searle, 1969; Habermas, 1984; Aurama¨ ki & Lyytinen, 1996). Discourses can also be categorized and typified for the purpose of analyzing an information system thus forming discourse types (Aurama¨ ki et al. 1988, 1992). The illocutionary and perlocutionary elements of speech acts involve on the personal level the intentions, interpretations, and effects of the communicationw under analysis. These personal, often ambiguous, effects are difficult to analyze by any individual other than the speaker or receiver her/himself (Bazerman, 1994), where, for example, the aim is to implement any information system based on speech-actbased analysis (Ljungberg & Holm, 1997). Speech acts are thus closely bound to a particular context and situation since they originally represent only short utterances, each carrying out a single communicative intention (Bazerman, 1994). This emphasis has its roots in the fact that speech act theory was originally created to clarify certain issues in the contemporary philosophy of language: neither Austin’s (1962), Searle’s (1969), nor Habermas’ (1984) theoretical efforts were focusing on information systems development. In real organizational communication, however, utterances often include multiple communicative intentions and effects in a single ‘package’ (as illustrated by Bazerman, 1994) — consider long textual documents or relational databases, for example — which make the creation of speech-act-based models for several kinds of information systems rather difficult and impractical. Speech acts, in which the emphasis is on the process aspect of expressing and receiving information in the primary contexts of the utterances, thus neglect that dimension of information systems in which information ‘packages’ are seen as products. This aspect, however, must be inevitably considered as well in information systems development; for instance, for the purposes of data mining, automatic indexing of documents, and other cases in which information systems involve secondary uses of recorded data aimed at communicating something to humans. In these situations, certain items of communicationw have somehow become typified and reified as socially constructed objects (see Berger & Luckmann, 1966), that is, after a while, these typifications and instances of communicationw come to exist more or less independently of their original producers or primary receivers. A product-like

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information object in communicationw can be used as such for legitimate (and illegitimate) communicative purposes regardless of the original communicative intentions of the primary producers and receivers of that data (see Smith et al., 1996; Ngwenyama & Lee, 1997). The concept of genre is capable of carrying connotations related to the ‘information-as-product’ aspect, and of including the primary communicative intentions of both the producer(s) and user(s) of communicationw. As a genre can include several speech acts, and play a role in one or more larger communicative processes (i.e., genre systems), I would locate the concept of genre as a unit of analysis between the speech act and discourse with regard to its granularity. Speech acts continue to be needed as a unit of analysis when a stakeholder needs to analyze and discuss the primary context and communicative intentions in which an utterance (e.g. an instance of a genre) is produced and perceived. In addition, typical occurrences of certain kinds of speech acts can be analyzed within genres. However, the concept of genre also makes it possible to discuss the secondary types of uses and meanings of data represented by a particular type of utterance. The concept of discourse, in turn, can well involve both genres and speech acts. However, the concept of discourse can also include casual communicationw, which cannot be fully captured by genre concepts (Bergquist & Ljungberg, 1999). Hence, I regard the concepts of discourse type and genre system as closely related, but not totally identical, concepts with regard to their potential usability in the analysis of communicationw for information systems development. To summarize this attempt at conceptual integration between genre concepts and speech-act-based discourse analysis in information systems development, I conclude that a genre can include one or more speech acts, whose identification is useful when the need is to thoroughly analyze the primary context(s) in which a certain kind of communication is instantiated. A certain type of discourse can consist of one or more genres occurring in a logical order in recurrent communicative processes.

5. Concluding remarks This paper has discussed the potential of genre theory to serve as a conceptual means for operationalizing the goals, guiding principles, and principles for the development process involved in the critical approach to information systems development. The discussion contributes to information systems research by illustrating that genre-based analysis of organizational communicationw has the potential to promote three types of rationality in information systems development — communicative, emancipatory, and formal — all of which are regarded as fundamental to any method pursuing the critical approach (Klein & Hirschheim, 1991). The paper has also compared the concept of genre to the concepts speech act and discourse, which have previously been considered as the pioneering fundamental concepts for modeling communicationw within the critical approach. However, a number of challenges need to be overcome in adopting a genre-based approach to systems development practice. The first identification of an organiza-

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tion’s genre repertoire requires considerable effort and involvement on the part of numerous individual stakeholders, often with varying motivations and from different cultural backgrounds, throughout the organization. Any analytical method aimed at promoting practical genre analysis for information systems development should identify the relevant properties to be analyzed about each genre from a practical viewpoint, as well as provide ease, efficiency, and unambiguity of use, thereby enabling broad participation in communicationsi and critical analysis of genres. One deficiency of genre concepts lies in the fundamental concept of genre itself. Identifying genres means abstracting from recurrent, routine-like, instances of communicationw to create typologies, thus losing some of the richness of real communication of day-to-day life. Genre-based thinking does not expose needs for casual communicationw (Bergquist & Ljungberg, 1999) and personal information processing. If a piece of informal communicationw or personal information is explicitly defined as an ‘official’ genre or genre system, it is no longer so casual, spontaneous or personal any more. In addition, the challenges related to data processing inside the computer might be rather indiscernible with genre theory. Thus, this paper does not suggest that genre concepts alone should be regarded as fundamental within the critical approach. Despite the shortcomings of genre concepts, a great number of information systems with significance at the organizational (let alone inter-organizational) level aim at purposes, meanings, forms, and technological implementations of communicationw shared beforehand, i.e., rather explicit genres. The critical approach itself, in its interest in formal rationality, seeks effective ways to develop efficient work routines to be so that the creative capability of human beings could be emancipated from these to the greatest possible extent. The most evident contribution of using genre concepts within the critical approach is that they provide a practical, detailed, and comprehensible, but still theoretically grounded, conceptual basis on which to identify, debate, and develop technically efficient communicative routines thereby emancipating people for creative work. Or, if a group of human stakeholders performs a creative enterprise collaboratively, then a shared and explicit genre repertoire in which the individual genres have recognized normative scopes can help those stakeholders negotiate for, commit to, coordinate, and communicate the tasks and results of their enterprise, as necessary. As an example, let us consider the academic community and its established, however evolving, scholarly genres (journal articles, monographs, reviews, letters to editors, workshops, paper presentations in conferences, panel debates, public defences of dissertations, etc.) aimed at communicating research performed within the global ‘information system’ of the academic world. A ‘systems developer’ aiming at improving scholarly communicationw would hardly dream of changing all scholarly genres overnight by the implementation of any particular, how ever sophisticated, system. Still, thanks to the more or less critical debate among a number of those involved in academic communicationsi, several advances in scholarly communicationw are now emerging from and alongside the existing genres. Examples include the increasing number of electronic journals and conference proceedings adopting novel forms enabled by digital media, computer-aided genres for the reviewing pro-

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cess, public defences conducted through video-conferencing, and digital libraries disseminating scholarly works instantly and effectively via the World Wide Web. In any case, a repertoire of commonly understood scholarly genres will also be needed in the future to enable academic communication(w&si) in the first place. All in all, genre theory and its fundamental concepts seem to provide a promising conceptual basis for analyzing communicationw, which operationalizes the basic rationalities, goals, and principles of the critical approach. In particular, an identified repertoire of genres and genre systems in an organization at a specific date can serve as a conceptual baseline for a continuous critical debate, and consensual implementations of genres can be mutually enacted and debated further among the stakeholders. Genre-based thinking is unlikely to freeze information systems development within a particular fixed structure of communicationw created in the plain top-down, or plain bottom-up, manner.10 On the contrary, I expect, on the basis of the discussion above, that a genre repertoire of communicationw, when subject to critical communicationsi and explicit development (with the wide participation of the stakeholders), can promote a critical but constructive attitude to information technology in an organizational context. Genres, genre systems, and genre repertoires have the potential to serve as a conceptual basis to actively “growing systems in emergent organizations” (Truex, Baskerville, & Klein, 1999), where continuous debate on and elaboration of information systems is a necessity. Without any shared fundamental conceptual basis for structuring and modelling communicationw a critical and comprehensive communicationsi for information systems development could hardly be organized nor pursued. Hence I would argue that genres of organizational communicationw must be regarded as one fundamental conceptual ground for thinking critically about contemporary information systems development. In future research, I suggest that communicative genres should be identified and analyzed in organizations at various levels of normative scope. This research could furthermore provide a solid ground for developing practical, critically oriented, methods for designing and implementing organizational communication via digital media. Document management (Levy, 1993; Tyrva¨ inen & Pa¨ iva¨ rinta, 1999; Karjalainen et al., 2000) and computer supported co-operative work (Orlikowski & Yates, 1998) have hitherto been identified as potential areas of genre-based information systems development. However, genre concepts would probably apply also to other areas: for instance, to the analysis and implementation of communicationw transformed from the physical world to virtual reality in ‘cyberspace’. An interesting example would be the analysis of the different genres of meetings participated in by geographically separated people, which could potentially be conducted through digital media instead of face-to-face meetings. The identification of universal and contingently relevant properties of genres and genre systems in organizations would be one interesting line of research. The focus should be set on properties relevant for supporting the planning and development of different kinds of information systems.

10 Truex and Klein (1991) warn about this kind of consequence of developing information systems based on any structures identified in the organization.

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Explicit, practice-oriented properties of genres can be useful for constructing a comprehensive framework and practical tools for holistic, but still critical, planning and design of information systems. The maxims of the critical approach provide a set of indicators to assess whether a particular method of information systems development, and the experience gained from its use in a particular development effort, involves a critical orientation.

Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Chris Argyris, Esa Aurama¨ ki, Richard Boland, Pertti Ja¨ rvinen, Kalle Lyytinen, Airi Salminen, Pasi Tyrva¨ inen, and especially three anonymous reviewers for their critical but encouraging comments on the earlier drafts. Michael Freeman provided invaluable help in revising the language of this paper. Any remaining shortcomings are, of course, my responsibility alone. The study was funded by the Finnish Technology Development Centre.

Appendix A. Two genre-based studies on document management In the study reported by Tyrva¨ inen and Pa¨ iva¨ rinta (1999), the author participated in the definition of a genre-based information architecture as well as two other development initiatives in a unit of an industrial corporation with 2000 employees. The unit engineers and manufactures high-tech construction products. He acted as an external facilitator and consultant in these development initiatives between January 1997 and autumn 1998. Background information about the organization was collected by discussing with several information systems developers, managers and employees of the company, by participating in development meetings and making notes about the meetings and discussions, by conducting interviews and facilitating group work sessions with several representatives of the organization, and by examining documented information about the organization such as policy and strategy declarations, quality system documentation, and plans for development initiatives. This provided an in-depth insight into the situation in the target organization and its information management. During the first stages of the information architecture definition, the author facilitated 13 collaborative sessions, in which altogether 524 genres of organizational communication were identified and named with the aid of more than 30 process owners and experts from 13 subunits of the target organization. After this information architecture initiative, the author performed a small-scale field experiment in collaboration with three information systems developers in April 1998. The motivation for the experiment in the target organization was to start rethinking document management, as one of the systems developers held the responsibility for guidelining the issue for the future. The research rationale was to test a preliminary framework and tool for analyzing organizational document genres. A detailed presentation of the framework used can be seen in Tyrva¨ inen and Pa¨ iva¨ rinta (1999). The author facilitated two separate sessions to thoroughly scrutinize 11

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(out of the 524) genres selectively chosen by the system developers by using the framework mentioned. The first session was participated by one systems developer and the second by the two others. The experiment revealed to the participants, e.g., that the information systems developers were unable to scrutinize the most genres let alone to decide on their technological implementations by themselves. Rather, Tyrva¨ inen and Pa¨ iva¨ rinta (1999) concluded that technological implementations for organizational document genres should be debated in collaboration among system developers, managers, and most essentially the persons actually using those genres at work. Karjalainen et al. (2000) report an action research project in which 850 genres of organizational communication were identified in the Center for Scientific Computing (CSC). The CSC is a non-profit organization of c. 80 experts providing services in several areas of advanced computing in Finland (http://www.csc.fi/). For instance, the CSC coordinates the national university and research network and provides supercomputing capacity and expertise to demanding computing tasks for university researchers and other customers. The project aimed at increased understanding of contemporary document management and a requirements definition for the future implementation of an enterprise document management system. The author participated in the project as an external consultant and facilitator. Forty employees identified the 850 genres in nine collaborative sessions covering the nine groups of expertise into which the organization was divided. Two to six representatives from each group participated in the sessions. The genres were then listed on an electronic spreadsheet (MS Excel) by the researchers. After identifying the genres, the representatives of the CSC and the researchers defined 19 properties to be analyzed about each genre. The employees then analyzed the genres they use at work according to these properties. As a result, the CSC now has an explicit, documented, and comprehensive genre repertoire illustrating established communi-

Fig. A1.

A stylized proportion of the genre repertoire at the CSC.

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Tyrva¨ inen, P., & Pa¨ iva¨ rinta, T. (1999). On rethinking organizational document genres for electronic document management. In R. H. Sprague, Proceedings of the 32nd annual Hawaii international conference on system sciences. Genre in digital documents (CD-ROM). Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society. Ulrich, W. (1983). Critical heuristics of social planning: a new approach to practical philosophy. Bern: Paul Haupt. Weber, M. (1947). The theory of economic and social organization. New York: The Free Press. Wilson, F. A. (1997). The truth is out there: the search for emancipatory principles in information systems design. Information Technology and People, 10 (3), 187–204. Yates, J. (1989). Control through communication: the rise of system in American management. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Yates, J., & Orlikowski, W. J. (1992). Genres of organizational communication: a structurational approach to studying communication and media. Academy of Management Review, 17 (2), 299–326. Yates, J., Orlikowski, W. J., & Okamura, K. (1995). Constituting genre repertoires: deliberate and emergent patterns of electronic media use. Academy of Management Journal; Best Paper Proceedings, 38, 353–357. Yates, J., Orlikowski, W. J., & Okamura, K. (1999). Explicit and implicit structuring of genres in electronic communication: reinforcement and change of social interaction. Organization Science, 10 (1), 83–103. Yates, J., Orlikowski, W. J., & Rennecker, J. (1997). Collaborative genres for collaboration: genre systems in digital media. In Proceedings of the 30th annual Hawaii international conference on system sciences: digital documents, Vol. VI (pp. 50–59). Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press. Zimmerman, E. N. (1994). On definition and rhetorical genre. In A. Freedman, & P. Medway, Genre and the new rhetoric (pp. 125–132). London: Taylor & Francis. Tero Pa¨iva¨rinta received his Ph.Lic. (Econ.) in Information Systems from the University of Jyva¨ skyla¨ , in Finland, in 2000 (M.Sc. in 1996). His research interests include genre theory, critical perspectives on information systems development, method engineering, and document management. His work history at the University of Jyva¨ skyla¨ has involved close collaboration with the Finnish industry and the public sector on these topics since 1995, resulting in a number of publications in information systems conferences and books.