JoAnne Yates and Wanda Orlikowski first developed the concept of organizational-communication genres in a 1992 article for theAcademy of Management Review, in which they tracked the emergence of e-mail and how it initially borrowed from the memo genre.i Since then, they have published articles using this concept to analyze and understand a range of new media, from e-mail to groupware to instant messaging. A 1994 article inAdministrative Science Quarterly was based on the coding of over 2,000 e-mail messages from a group of geographically and organizationally dispersed computer scientists who were developing an artificial intelligence language in the early 1980s. Yates and Orlikowski tracked how the messages developed over time, initially drawing on the memo genre but gradually incorporating additional genres, especially the dialogue genre (whereby the originator of an e-mail message embeds all or part of a previous message into the current one before responding to it, thereby creating the effect of an oral conversation). Their paper, which has been cited almost 400 times since its publication, according to Google Scholar, also showed how the group could be characterized by the repertoire of genres they used and how it changed over time.ii

Early versions of the model focused on purpose (why), content (what) and format (how). In a 2002 article in theJournal of Business Communication, the researchers articulated a more detailed model, adding participants (who), timing (when) and location (where).iii This Genre Model provides a rigorous approach to analyzing the use of emerging technologies, and it can be valuable both in organizational research and practice.

Anne Jackson (former manager of an innovation team at IBM, where she was involved in evaluating the potential business uses, benefits and risks of emerging technologies) recently collaborated with Orlikowski and Yates on a paper about corporate blogging that employed the Genre Model and illustrated its utility.iv

i. J. Yates and W.J. Orlikowski, “Genres of Organizational Communication: A Structurational Approach to Studying Communication and Media,” Academy of Management Review 17, no. 2 (April 1992): 299–326.ii. W.J. Orlikowski and J. Yates, “Genre Repertoire: Examining the Structuring of Communicative Practices in Organizations,” Administrative Science Quarterly 39, no. 4 (1994): 541–574.iii. J. Yates and W.J. Orlikowski, “Genre Systems: Structuring Interaction Through Communicative Norms,” Special Issue on Qualitative Research, Journal of Business Communication 39, no. 1 (2002): 13–35.iv. A. Jackson, J. Yates and W. J. Orlikowski, “Corporate Blog-ging: