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A Genre Approach to Applying Critical Social Theory to InformationSystems Development

Tero Päivärinta

Information Technology Research InstituteUniversity of Jyväskylä, Finland

PO.Box 3540351 Jyväskylä, Finlandphone: +358 14 603 038

fax: +358 14 602 544email: tero.paivarinta@titu.jyu.fi

Stream: Information Technology and Critical Theory

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AbstractCritical Social Theory has been regarded as an alternative approach to informationsystems development in the era of ubiquitous information technologies and extensiveapplications. However, critical theorists have so far clarified few fundamental conceptsto be actually discussed, planned and implemented in practical development initiativesto constitute a proper systems development approach. This paper contributes byreflecting fundamental concepts of the genre theory of organisational communication onthe goals and guiding principles of Critical Social Theory. Use of the suggested concepts– 'genre', 'normative scope', 'genre system', 'genre repertoire' and 'document genre' – isdemonstrated by a small-scale field experiment conducted to rethink enterprisedocument management in an industrial organisation. The suggested concepts andimplications of the field experiment are discussed in the light of eight maxims identifiedfor the Critical Social Theory approach to information systems. The discussion impliesthat the concepts presented are usable within the Critical Social Theory approach toinformation systems development, at least in the domain of enterprise documentmanagement. Finally, some deficiencies of the presented ideas and the field experimentare identified, and directions for further research are proposed.

1. Introduction"Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts."

(Proverbs, c. 1000 – 900 B.C., 4:23)Contemporary information systems are often planned and the technological choicesimplemented within an extensive, organisation-wide or even cross-organisational scope.Representative examples include enterprise resource planning systems, inter-, extra- andintranet applications, product data management, and enterprise document management. Agreat number of corporations are strongly investing in ubiquitous information technologyinfrastructures and extensive applications to have full benefit of global networking andbusiness process reengineering (e.g. Broadbent & Weill, 1997, Grover, Teng & Fiedler,1998). On the other hand, end users with a little experience on information technology arebecoming more and more capable of rapidly implementing small-scale, still oftensophisticated, applications themselves for the needs of a person, group or an organisationalunit without much, nor any, help from an information systems department (Grover et al.,1998). New information systems and organisational practices are as well required in smallercompanies. For instance, a networked manufacturing subcontractor may have a continualneed to adapt its business processes and information systems to varying partnerships (Song &Nagi, 1997, Chen, Tyrväinen & Salminen, 1998, Toh, Newman & Bell, 1998).

The emerging types of information systems and organisational trends mentioned abovecontinue to set challenges to information systems development. Among many academicvoices in the 1990's, Ngwenyama (1991), Hirschheim, Klein & Lyytinen (1995), Dahlbom(1997) and Ciborra (1998) have underlined the importance of new approaches to informationsystems development in contemporary organisations, and especially concrete ways to put thenew approaches identified into practice. An approach to information systems developmenthas been defined by Iivari, Hirschheim & Klein (1998, p.166) as:

"goals, guiding principles, fundamental concepts, and principles for the ISD[information systems development] process that drive interpretations and actions inISD".

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Critical Social Theory has been regarded as such an alternative approach to informationsystems development (Ngwenyama, 1991, Hirschheim et al., 1995). Below, the basic ideas ofCritical Social Theory are referred as the critical approach when applied to informationsystems development. Several goals and guiding principles, even some methodologicalguidelines, of the critical approach have been established (Ngwenyama, 1991, Hirschheim etal., 1995). However, critical theorists in the field of information systems have hithertodefined few fundamental concepts to be adopted in systems development methodologies, anuncommon exception being the role of 'speech acts' in designing applications for computer-supported co-operative work (Iivari et al., 1998, p. 179). The explicit identification offundamental concepts of an approach and a methodology is important, because a systemdeveloper comprehends an information system by these (otherwise implicitly adopted)concepts, and the system is furthermore implemented using models and specifications builton them. Moreover, explicit fundamental concepts construct a basis for rigorous and criticaldiscourse on improvements in the approach and methodology in question. A dearth of explicitconcepts capable of operationalising the goals and guiding principles of Critical SocialTheory might partially explain a lack of actual systems development methodologies adoptingthe critical approach, as noted by Hirschheim et al. (1995).

This paper suggests fundamental concepts originating in the genre theory of organisationalcommunication (Yates & Orlikowski, 1992, Orlikowski & Yates, 1994) to be applied toinformation systems development following the goals and guiding principles of the criticalapproach. The paper also demonstrates the genre concepts by a small-scale field experimentduring which enterprise document management was going to be rethinked in an industrialorganisation. A contribution to research is made by scrutinising the genre concepts in thelight of eight maxims based on the goals and guiding principles identified with the criticalapproach. The rationale for this study is to facilitate the adoption of explicit fundamentalconcepts within the critical approach, especially for enterprise document management.

The rest of the paper is organised as follows. Section 2 describes the fundamental concepts ofthe genre theory needed in this paper and shortly reviews use of the genre theory incontemporary information systems research literature. The field experiment applying thegenre concepts to rethink enterprise document management is illustrated in section 3. Section4 reflects the genre concepts and the implications of the field experiment on the maximsrepresenting the goals and guiding principles of the critical approach to information systems.Section 5 concludes with suggestions for further research.

2. Genre theory

2.1 Fundamental concepts of the genre theoryThe notion of genre has been used in a number of disciplines and arts since the times ofAristotle and Cicero (e.g. Zimmerman 1994). However, it has only recently been regarded asa useful concept in analysing organisational communication (Yates & Orlikowski, 1992, Paré& Smart, 1994). A genre of organisational communication can be defined as a typifiedcommunicative action characterised by similar substance and form (Miller, 1984, Yates &Orlikowski, 1992). The substance, or communicative purpose, of a genre has to berecognised within a community by more than one human beings, referring to social motives,themes and topics expressed (Yates & Orlikowski, 1992, Bazerman, 1994, Berkenkotter &Huckin, 1995). Also the form of a genre – including structural features, communication

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medium and symbol system to represent information – has to be identified within thecommunity (Orlikowski & Yates, 1994, Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995). The range of acommunity within which a genre is comprehended is referred as the normative scope of thegenre (Yates & Orlikowski 1992). A normative scope can extend to anything in betweengenres specific to a certain intra-organisational group or subculture like 'the Diary' about theshifts in running a paper machine on the factory floor of a Finnish papermill (Kovalainen,Robinson & Auramäki, 1998) and internationally recognised genres such as 'memo', 'businessletter' (Yates & Orlikowski, 1992) or 'scientific journal article' (Berkenkotter & Huckin1995).

A communicative genre should be distinguished from a medium – for instance a 'fax' or an 'e-mail' are not representatives of communicative genres (in their general meaning), but a'business letter' or a 'hotel reservation' sent by fax or electronic mail are. However, mediamay play an important role in the form of a genre and the introduction of new media mayoccasionally change genres (Yates & Orlikowski, 1992). Changes in a genre may also emergealong with institutionalisation of organisational practices and with individual actions taken tochange the norms and rules for using the genre in communication, either explicit or implicit(Yates & Orlikowski, 1992, Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995, Yates, Orlikowski & Okamura,1999).

According to Bazerman (1994, p. 97) a genre system consists of"interrelated genres that interact with each other in specific settings".

A sequence of genres 'job ad', 'job letter', 'curriculum vitae' and 'job interview' is an exampleof a genre system. When there exists more than one separate genres used simultaneously for acommunicative purpose, genres can also overlap (Orlikowski & Yates, 1994, p. 544). Both asequence of genres and a set of overlapping genres are included in the concept of genresystem constituting a wider communicative process shared within the community in question(Bazerman, 1994).

A genre repertoire of an organisation"indicates its established communicative practices" (Orlikowski & Yates, 1994, p. 546).

Following changes in individual genres, a genre repertoire changes over time either implicitlyor explicitly (Yates et al., 1999). Implicit development occurs along with everydaycommunicative actions taken by the members of the community in question, eithersupporting existing genres or somehow contradicting their enacted use. Explicit developmentof a genre repertoire may include active adoption of new genres and genre systems oralteration of the existing ones. A development may take place through trial-and-error, bylearning from other communities or actively creating alternative routines. Furthermore,explicit analysis and development of an organisation's genre repertoire have been considereduseful in comprehending the introductions, uses and influences of new media in organisations(Orlikowski & Yates, 1994, an example in Yates et al., 1999).

2.2 The genre theory in information systems literatureThe idea of applying the genre concepts and theory to information systems has beenparticularly promoted by the annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences(HICSS) including a minitrack called "Genre[s] in digital documents" in the agenda since1997. As Nunberg (1997, p. 2) declares:

"It has become increasingly clear that the successful use of digital media depends on theemergence of new or transformed genres of digital communication... And since genre is

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a crucial ingredient in document use and interpretation, these considerations play a partin virtually all aspects of the design and implementation of systems involving the use ofdocuments."

The papers of the minitrack cover the following topics to date (Sprague, 1997, 1998, 1999):• novel genres emerging along with new technologies in digital media, mostly in the Web

or groupware, and their theoretical implications (Erickson, 1997 & 1999, Watters &Shepherd, 1997, Crowston & Williams, 1997, Schultze & Boland, 1997, Yates,Orlikowski & Rennecker, 1997, de Saint-Georges, 1998, Roberts, 1998, Fortanet, Palmer& Posteguillo, 1998, Panko & Panko, 1998, Boguraev, Bellamy & Kennedy, 1999)

• evolution of widely understood traditional genres in digital media (Fox, McMillan &Eaton, 1999, Rieffel, 1999)

• design of particular tools for digital media (Smoliar & Baker, 1997, Karlgren &Straszheim, 1997, Morin, 1998, Vasudevan & Palmer, 1999)

• theoretical aspects of genre features in digital media versus non-digital media (Yates &Sumner, 1997, Shepherd & Watters, 1998 & 1999, Crowston & Williams 1999, Toms &Campbell, 1999)

• transforming organisational document genres to digital media (Tallberg, 1997, vonWestarp et al., 1999, Tyrväinen & Päivärinta, 1999).

• use of organisational document genres at work (Bergquist & Ljungberg, 1999)

So far, outside the proceedings of HICSS, the genre theory has been applied to informationsystems most significantly by Orlikowski & Yates (e.g. Yates & Orlikowski 1994, Yates etal. 1999), who have concentrated especially on studying groups or teams adopting atechnology for computer-supported collaborative work. Some research around the genretheory has also recently been conducted in Scandinavia, for instance applying it to distancelearning (Svensson, 1998) or to research on intranets and genre reproduction in organisationalcommunication (Bergquist & Ljungberg, 1998).

On this basis, the genre theory indeed seems to have a potential for providing a conceptualaid to the development of emerging types of information systems. However, the adoption ofthe genre theory for promoting the development of information systems within the goals andguiding principles of the critical approach has not been scrutinised in contemporaryinformation systems literature. Hence the topic of this paper deserves further studies; oneexample of enterprise document management given below.

2.3 Document genreAlthough the genre theory has been used for analysing digital documents in informationsystems literature, the notion of a "document genre" has not been explicitly defined orelaborated with respect to other types of information. The concept of a document genre iselaborated here to crystallise the role "documents" play in information managementnowadays, and to demonstrate use of the genre concepts in enterprise document managementin section 3.

A "document" has been an important notion in the terminology of information systemsresearch and practice for a while; for instance in the domain of office systems (e.g. Culnan,1980, Bracchi & Pernici, 1984). In information systems literature, documents havetraditionally been regarded as somewhat unstructured information distinguishable from morestructured information stored in relational (and other kinds of) databases (Swanson & Culnan,1978, Teufel, 1988, Sprague, 1995, Sutton, 1996). In this sense, document information has

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been estimated to cover even at 80 – 90 % of recorded organisational information (e.g.Sprague 1995). During the advancement of the digital era, the relationship of documents anddocument management systems to other information systems has, however, become moreobscured. A brief literature review and a case study (Päivärinta & Tyrväinen 1998) were ableto identify several diverging connotations of a "document" introduced due to emergingachievements in information technology. The diverging connotations were often usedimplicitly by several authors referring to diverging technologies in contemporary informationsystems literature, let alone document management practitioners trying to adopt thesetechnologies in their organisations.

An approach to grasping the notion of a document in the digital era is to examine it throughthe theoretical lens of the genre theory. As a document essentially contains data encoded andrecorded on a medium outside human brains and represented for human consumption (e.g.Sprague, 1995, Brier, 1996, Buckland, 1997), a document genre can be defined as a typifiedcommunicative purpose and form of recorded data enacted within a community. Now, adocument can be defined as an instance of a document genre, or a piece of recordedinformation stored and used for a communicative purpose recognised only by a single person.

Digital media have introduced new possibilities to embed functionality in document genresreplicated from traditional media and stimulated the introduction of novel document genreswith functional capabilities unseen in traditional media. Examples of document genres oftencarrying novel functionality include a 'personal homepage' (in the Web), a 'FAQ' (FrequentlyAsked Questions) or a 'digital broadsheet' (Shepherd & Watters, 1998, 1999).

3. Applying a genre-based approach to enterprise document managementThis section presents a field experiment where the notion of a document genre was applied torethink enterprise document management in an industrial company1 (Tyrväinen & Päivärinta,1999). The purpose of presenting the experiment here is to illustrate an application of thegenre concepts to enterprise document management for the discussion part of this paper(section 4).

3.1 Background information about the target organisationThe corporation in question engineers and manufactures complex high-tech constructionproducts. Products are tailored for customer needs and implemented in large, multi-organisational and geographically distributed projects participated by several company unitslocated in four continents. In addition, many subcontractors and other organisationsparticipate in a project. A project life cycle, including planning, manufacturing, deliveringand constructing the product may last longer than a year. Maintenance business related to theproduct is significant, as the life cycle of a product may extend to tens of years. During thelife cycle a product requires regular maintenance where timely product information plays anessential role. Information management is essentially focused on documents related to theproduct and business.

1 The organisation and the participants of the experiment did not want to be publicly associated with this study.More detailed information to confirm the research environment may be given confidentially e.g. for the editor-in-chief as necessary.

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This study was conducted on one site of the corporation. The site has over 2000 employeescarrying a major responsibility within the corporate network for coordinating a major amountof projects and for producing a great number of product components.

Although practically all documented information already was produced and stored bycomputers, many issues in enterprise document management required resolution. MSOffice™ was a standard software package for office documents in the corporation. Fourseparate and unintegrated computer-aided design (CAD) systems were used for engineeringdocuments. Lotus Notes™ was used as a means to share and store a plethora of digitaldocuments globally, but common practices for document management, such as themanagement of document life cycles, versioning or disposal practices, were still widelymissing. Many employees relied on unshared, personal documents at work. An enterpriseresource planning system was under implementation for core businesses. Archiving and usepractices of optical character reading for manually stored documents were underdevelopment.

"We put documents in the systems but we don't manage them."2 (a development engineerof the site)

Very common metaphors, used by information systems developers to comprehend andexpress organisational needs, were 'technological infrastructures' and 'business processes'.The following slogans commonly sown by chief information officers illustrate this:

"..'ERP' [a process-based enterprise resource planning system] will include all![necessary information for business processes]" (a chief information officer involved in alarge enterprise resource planning project)

"100% Notes into every PC [personal computer]" (a chief information officer)

3.2 Research processThe author participated in the definition of an information architecture as well as two otherdevelopment initiatives on the site as an external facilitator in between January 1997 andAutumn 1998. The author was expected to bring some critical, 'outside', view to thedevelopment initiatives by the information management of the site. In addition to the fieldexperiment reported below, the author collected background information by discussing withseveral information systems developers, managers and employees of the company, byparticipating in development meetings and making notes about the meetings and discussions,by conducting interviews and facilitating group work sessions with several representatives ofthe organisation, and by examining documented information about the organisation such aspolicy and strategy declarations, quality system documentation and plans for developmentinitiatives. This provided an in-depth insight into the situation in the target organisation andits information management.

During the first stages of the information architecture definition, the author facilitated 13collaborative sessions where 524 information or knowledge elements were identified andnamed with the aid of more than 30 process owners and experts from 13 subunits of the site.Although the original goal of the architecture definition was to produce a context-independent map of the enterprise's information (Brancheau & Wetherbe 1986, Brancheau,Schuster & March 1989, Teng & Kettinger 1995) and knowledge, the information elements

2 All quotations in this section, as well as the genres identified, have been translated to English from Finnish,which was the language to conduct the study.

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were identified and named based on the contexts of production and primary use (seeexamples in table 1). Some of the knowledge elements identified had not been captured into arecorded form. For instance, 'Product expertise' referred to a person at the production unitwho actually walks to a meeting of a research and development group and participates in aproduct development project bringing the expertise into the project with him or her.

Table 1: Four examples of the 524 information / knowledge elements identified in theinformation architecture analysis

Producing subunit orexternal stakeholder

Information / knowledgeelement identified

To which subunit or external stakeholderproduced (primarily)

Sales, Project management Schedule (for engineering) Engineering unitProject management Schedule (of planned

installation and start)Customer

Sales Active sales initiatives Production units, Project management, Othersales units, ...

Production unit Product expertise Research and development unit

In a rapid review, over 350 of the 524 information elements were classified as documentgenres by the author. The criteria to identify an information element as a document genrewere the following:• The named information element had to classify recorded data and be intended for at least

one other human user by the producer.• The name of the information element had to be enacted by more than one person to

constitute an explicitly identified genre (Miller, 1984). This criterion was mostly fulfilledbecause the sessions where the information / knowledge elements were identified weremainly participated by a small group collaboratively naming each information orknowledge element.

The contexts of production and primary use of the document genres constituted a basis forgenre analysis by illustrating the substance of the genres and contextual needs for theirtechnological implementations.

A small-scale field experiment was performed by the author in collaboration with threeparticipants involved in the practical development of information management in the targetorganisation in April 1998. The motivation for the experiment for the part of the targetorganisation was to start rethinking enterprise document management for the site, as oneparticipant held a responsibility for guidelining the issue for the future in the organisation.The research rationale for conducting the field experiment was to test a preliminaryframework and tool to analyse organisational document genres. Detailed presentations of theframework used can be seen in Päivärinta & Tyrväinen (1998) and Tyrväinen & Päivärinta(1999). Thus this paper discusses the framework only in short.

In the framework, 11 facets to scrutinise a document genre were defined (Appendix 1). Undereach facet, three to six paradigmatic categories were defined to shed light on alternativeviewpoints to a facet (Appendix 1). For instance, a facet Intented life-span for an instance ofa document genre might be permanent, defined in advance, or transient. Tyrväinen &Päivärinta (1999) wanted both the current and desired state of affairs for each of thedocument genres to be discussed so that changes needed for the digital era and changingorganisational conditions could be explicitly illustrated. For this purpose, a code to be definedfor each category under the facets of the framework was developed (Appendix 2).

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With the analytical tool consisting of the facets, paradigmatic categories and analysis code(Appendix 3), the author facilitated two experiments to scrutinise 11 of the 350 documentgenres (table 2). First, a person responsible for guidelining enterprise document managementanalysed ten genres with the researcher (Appendix 4). From now on, he is called "Art". Theresearcher explained him the contents of the analytical tool. Art wanted to start the analysisstraight with three document genres at the top of the list of the 350 document genres3:'Schedule (for engineering)', 'Active sales initiatives' and 'Reduction rates (of contract toolsuppliers)'. The first part of the experiment took two hours altogether.

Table 2: Document genres analysed in the field experimentProducing subunit orexternal stakeholder

Document genre To which subunit or externalstakeholder produced (primarily)

Sales Active sales initiatives All organisational unitsBusiness development Information about ongoing development

projectsAll organisational units

Engineering unit As-built product documentation Project managementInformation management Instructions (for information tech.) All organisational unitsTool purchasing team Reduction rates (of contract tool suppliers) Production unitsAll organisational units Request for archival Archiving functionAll organisational units Request for archived document Archiving functionSales, Project management Schedule (for engineering) Engineering unitEngineering unit Schedule (for subcontractors' engineering) SubcontractorsProject management Schedule (of planned installation and start) CustomerEngineering unit Schedule (of production) Sales

"Tom" and "Mark" participated in the second second part of the experiment. They hadpreviously been involved in the information architecture analysis and now starting to workwith a development initiative on scheduling information about business projects. Schedulinginformation, earlier produced by text processing (MS Word™ ) and spreadsheet (MSExcel™ ) applications, was desired to be produced, processed and utilised via a softwarespecifically intented for that purpose. The quick introduction to the analysis framework wasalso given to Tom and Mark. The second part thus combined the views and opinions of Tomand Mark. They did not have access to the results of the first part with Art. This session tooka bit longer than the first one because of eager conversations between the participants duringthe analysis. Hence less document genres were analysed. Neither Tom nor Mark was familiarwith every document genre discussed with Art. Hence they wanted to pay more attention todocument genres concerning the scheduling information (Appendix 4).

3.3 ImplicationsThe implications discussed below are based on the author's observations about the targetorganisation in general, and particularly on qualitative data and the analysis table for the 11document genres (Appendix 4) he captured from the two experimental sessions describedabove. Based on the author's insight about the organisation and the exhaustive informationarchitecture analysis, even these two small-scale sessions were satisfactory for someimplications of the genre-based approach to rethinking enterprise document management inthe target organisation.

The use of computerised information technology for document production and storage didnot guarantee high-quality document management as such. Although the most documented

3 The list was organised according to alphabetical order in Finnish, which was the language of the experiment.

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information had been produced and recorded by computers for a while, that information wasnot yet managed in many respects. Different document genres seemed to need different kindsof management concerning both substance and form; as well of social aspects of the purposesof production and use, as of technical aspects of produced structure, processing for retrieval,document architecture and medium, for instance (see Appendix 4). Even within the limitednumber of document genres analysed, a variation occurred in prevailing categoriesconcerning contemporary and desired situations within many facets. In addition to theprevailing categories, the need for alternative categories possible was apparent within adocument genre. Thus a variation in the substance, forms and technological implementationsof documents was desired even within one document genre, let alone among severaldocument genres.

Information systems developers had diverging knowledge and opinions about bothcontemporary and desired states of document management. Even with this small number ofparticipants it was possible to capture a variation both in their understandings of the currentsituation and in their views on the desired target state of a document genre (Appendix 4). Theexperiment was sufficient to expose different frames of thinking hence enabling a deeperunderstanding to be shared among the participants which can be utilised further in adevelopment initiative for the document genres analysed. A wide view on the desiredsubstance, form and functionality of a document genre should be constructed to avoidmisunderstandings and delusions during the discussion about its desired technologicalimplementation. The framework was able to reveal some hidden assumptions and differentviewpoints held by the participants for an explicit discussion during the sessions. Tomexpressed this as follows:

"The framework helps to create an outlined vision, an outlook of the development needsconcerning each document [genre]... People have different ways of thinking... theframework helps to see things from many viewpoints." (Tyrväinen & Päivärinta 1999)

No single person was considered as capable of comprehending every document genre inthe target organisation. Document genres had different normative scopes, i.e. employees donot share a comprehensive genre repertoire of a large organisation. Although the participantshad been involved in the development of information systems in the target organisation for areasonable time, they did not consider themselves capable to fully evaluate even the 11document genres, let alone the 350. Only the document genres being a part of their dailywork were easy to comprehend and analyse. For instance, Tom and Mark were able toanalyse the document genres of scheduling information better than some others not relatedwith their contemporary development initiative. This implies that in a large organisation withhundreds of document genres it is impossible to get a consistent overview of the requirementsfor document management without a structured approach and wide participation of thestakeholders using particular genres at work. As Art stated:

"I cannot imagine a person or a group in our company who could analyse all theinformation elements [found in the information architecture project] alone... without thepersons actually operating with them [the particular information elements to beanalysed] in their day-to-day work." (Tyrväinen & Päivärinta 1999)

A need for a tool for scrutinising document genres was identified. Despite of someidentified deficiencies of the framework for this kind of genre analysis, it was able to exposeseveral hidden assumptions of document information held by the participants even duringthese short sessions. All facets of the framework facilitated discussion among the participants

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and the researcher, for each of the document genres analysed. This resulted in a sharedinsight into the document genres among the participants and the researcher.

Art: "The analysis would be useful in the beginning of a development project concerningsome particular document genres... a some kind of checklist based on the frameworkwould reduce uncertainties [among the project participants] when starting the project...there exists many situations where a common 'language' among the participants has tobe developed before the project can proceed." (Tyrväinen & Päivärinta 1999)

Mark: "I started now to think totally differently about the Schedule (for Engineering)[than before the analysis]." (Tyrväinen & Päivärinta 1999)

The need to scrutinise document genres related with a development initiative was concretelynoticed after the development effort for scheduling information had been proceeding. Beforethe sessions described above, a decision had been made to acquire a software for this purposewithout doing much analysis of the social purposes nor different use contexts of thisinformation. The decision had been only based on technological comparisons betweentechnical features of alternative software packages. The software was installed for a pilotshortly after the field experiment. Previously, scheduling information had been producedmainly by text processing and spreadsheet applications. During the pilot, several problemsoccurred to the extent that both Tom and Mark agreed six months after the experiment that:

"...a more thorough analysis of [the genres of] scheduling documents [and their usecontexts] should have been done before the decision to buy the software."

In conclusion, Tyrväinen & Päivärinta (1999) suggested that organisational document genresand genre systems should be systematically analysed and rethinked in a collaborative andparticipative way among information systems specialists, organisation designers and theemployees using the documents in question at work before launching a developmentinitiative. Employees would have in-depth knowledge of the document genres they use,organisation designers would have a vision how processes, organisation structures and rolesof people (utilising the digitised document genres in the future) should be developed andfinally, information systems specialists would have knowledge of the opportunities andconstraints of information technology to implement these genres in digital media.

4. Discussion: Operationalising the critical approach by the genre conceptsAs the purpose of this paper was not to elaborate Critical Social Theory itself, rather than tomodestly suggest some ways to operationalise the critical approach to information systemspractice, the discussion mainly leans on two basic references to identify the maxims of thecritical approach to information systems development:• Ngwenyama (1991), because this article succinctly identifies five stringent requirements

for the critical approach based on a literature review on pioneering studies about CriticalSocial Theory in information systems research and practice and,

• Hirschheim, Klein & Lyytinen (1995), because the book unites the ideas of theseinfluential authors on the critical approach4 to information systems development.

In the following, the discussion about the genre concepts and the field experiment applyingthem is divided under the eight maxims of the critical approach identified. Some deficienciesof the genre concepts and the field experiment are also discussed.

4 (or "neohumanist paradigm" as they label it, still referring to the goals and guiding principles of Critical SocialTheory and the Frankfurt school)

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Maxim 1: Thou shalt critically debate social conditions, goals and purposes forinformation systems before engineering and implementing a technological application.Critical social debate has to take control over technological implementations. Hence socialreality and a technological information system have to be comprehended in different ways.Social reality is continuously structured and developed through critical social debate whereasa technological implementation for an information system may be continually developed inan "engineering" way following requirements originating from the social debate(Ngwenyama, 1991, Hirschheim et al., 1995). The opportunities provided by contemporaryinformation technology have to be scrutinised in relation to the organisation's social context.

The concepts of the genre theory serve as fundamental concepts capable of conseptualisingthe development of enterprise document management and other information systems at adetailed level. Especially, the genre concepts sensitise the dual nature of documents andrecorded information in general. On one hand, the genre theory denotes socially enacted (stillcontinuously changing) meanings and purposes associated with recorded data utilised orproduced by humans in organisational contexts. On the other, the genre concepts are able tocapture technological capabilities needed for processing and storage of data represented by aparticular genre, as well as the functionality possibly embedded in the representation of thedata by computer. Hence, the genre concepts have potential to bridge the gap in between thesocial debate and technological aspects of information systems development.

Maxim 2: Thou shalt love your fellow stakeholder by letting him or her freely andopenly participate in the continuous critical debate.The social debate has to be continuously participated by every stakeholder of the system inquestion in a collaborative way (Ngwenyama, 1991, Hirschheim et al., 1995).

Thinking about an information system in terms of the genre theory provides a conceptual aidto facilitate bottom-up argumentation and sense-making apart from plain top-down planningwith abstract high-level concepts, e.g. 'business processes' and 'information technologyinfrastructures', often sown by top management. Genres identified steer the debate fromabstract things toward topics that information users and producers know about and havesomething to say. Whereas abstract topics concerning the development of technologicalinfrastructures and networked business processes are not likely to be continuously discussedby many people, small-scale discussions about separate genres of documents and othercommunication are easier to start when the explicit development of a particular genre istimely. In this sense, a genre-based approach likely supports continuous debate. Thenormative scope provides a focused way to identify the appropriate stakeholders of atechnological application for a genre and genre system. The analysis of communicative anddocument genres in an organisation thus facilitates both wide participation and a relevantcritical debate within relevant groups and communities.

Maxim 3: Thou shalt seek emancipation of yourself and your fellow stakeholder, and,simultaneously, consider the truthful and common good for the whole organisation (andsociety).The social debate has to consider both the individual 'good' and 'common good' for the wholeorganisation (Ngwenyama, 1991). The debate has to remove biased and distortedcommunications, e.g., delusions, misunderstandings (also Orlikowski & Gash, 1994) orundesirable secondary use of recorded data (Smith, Milberg & Burke, 1996) along with othernatural, external and psychological barriers hindering the aspiration toward "rational" and

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"truthful" discourse (Hirschheim et al., 1995, p. 52). Information systems development has tobe value-laden towards improvements of the human conditions (Ngwenyama, 1991). Thecritical approach also assumes the existence of "the truth" toward which human conditionshave to be developed, and those people 'emancipated', attainable by the critical and opendebate (Hirschheim et al., 1995). To avoid artificial premises underlying "the truth" possiblystated subjectively by the system designer, and thus implicitly steering the 'critical' discoursetoward his or her view, there, however, exists the need for unquestionable values within theunit of the development effort from which neither the system designer nor other stakeholderswant to depart. This refers to Lewis' (1947) concept of "Tao" emphasising the need toidentify such unquestionable norms of human life for guidelining any technologicaldevelopment initative in an organisation and a society.

A system designer may promote emancipation by speaking of communicative or documentgenres and providing means for analysing them collaboratively and systematically.Nowadays, many systems designers are speaking of processes, infrastructures ortechnological applications by having some shallow generalisations in mind of the actualdocuments and other information intended to be processed in those applications. Byidentifying and analysing genres relevant in one's everyday work, the person may noticetechnological, social or psychological constraints and distorted communication affecting onhis or her lifeworld in the organisation instead of only trying to figure out the meanings ofsome distant technologies or processes. The "Tao" of a genre-based approach includes thatthe persons actually using or producing certain information should be regarded as essentialstakeholders who should be listened to in information systems development for their work.This is assumed to contribute automatically to well-being of the whole organisation and otherstakeholders. At least, a genre-based debate provides a necessary counterpoint to any top-down approach to designing an extensive information system.

Maxim 4: Thou shalt regard data as contextually comprehended by the personobserving the data in his or her lifeworld, and, as well, a part of data as more or lesscommonly understood within the organisation in question.The substance of data is contextually comprehended by a person observing the data in thelifeworld of his or her own (Ngwenyama, 1991). In addition to individual contextuality tointerpret information, socially enacted norms and more or less commonly understoodmeanings exist within different organisational levels and groups of people, attachingorganisational contextuality to represented data (Ngwenyama & Lee, 1997).

The genre theory recognises the possibility for different normative scopes for differentcommunicative or document genres, i.e. different levels of organisational contextuality.Genre repertoires of identified organisational levels or groups can be studied quiteindependently from each other. The 'common good' or 'truth' about information technologythus does not need always to be discussed within the scope of the whole organisation.Instead, a small group may quite independently discuss its internal purposes and tailoredtechnological needs for many genres and genre systems, within that normative scope. On theother hand, organisation-wide genres, such as a 'traveling-expenses account', could bediscussed, enacted and standardised within the organisation-wide scope, as necessary.

Maxim 5: Thou shalt have institutional tools for problem finding and formulation.Institutional tools to predict, conrol, and promote mutual understanding, discourse andemancipation among all stakeholders are needed in problem finding and formulation(Hirschheim et al., 1995).

15

By bringing a method for systematic analysis of communicative and document genres toinformation systems initiatives, a system designer may facilitate the critical debate andeliminate delusions and misunderstandings of the actual problems and needs fordevelopment. In the target organisation, some delusions concerning the software forscheduling information might have been avoided with systematic and participativediscussions about the document genres of scheduling information, by using a framework forscrutinising document genres before their technological implementation, even such as the oneused in the experiment. The preliminary framework for genre analysis was able todemonstrate the complexity and a great number of genres already identified in theorganisation's genre repertoire but earlier hidden under abstract language of businessprocesses or information technology infrastructures. This certainly facilitated problem findingand formulation in the target organisation.

Maxim 6: Thou shalt have practical methods for analysis and design, focusing onchange.In analysis, the identification of existing technical, social and linguistic barriers for optimalprediction and control, mutual understanding and emancipation are needed (Hirschheim et al.,1995). In logical and physical design, reconstructions and changes in technology, languageand organisational arrangements have to be applicable to practice in a flexible way. "Methodsmust be practice oriented focusing on change." (Ngwenyama, 1991, p. 272).

The genre-based analysis tool used in the field experiment was oriented toward change in apractical level by explicitly demonstrating the change between the current and desiredfeatures for each document genre in a relatively detailed way. An application grounded oncommunicative or document genres is likely easier to comprehend, faster to implement andmore flexible to be changed further in practice than heavy models and applications made toroutinise and automatise 'processes' involving human beings, for example. However, morepractical work to analyse and design actual applications should be done for validating theanalysis tool further or for the development of other methods for analysis and design.

Maxim 7: Thou shalt be aware of potential unwanted impacts of a technologicalapplication.Potential impacts of systems development initiatives on the organisational arrangements hasto be anticipated to mitigate unwanted effects of the technological system implementation(Hirschheim et al., 1995).

The organisational effects of a technological application of a genre are likely to be reasonablyidentified, whereas broad topics such as 'business processes' or 'information technologyinfrastructures' are often discussed at an abstract level hindering the detailed identification ofpotential impacts of the extensive implementations of processes and technologicalinfrastructures on different stakeholders. Also the organisational effects of genre elaborationand modification might be more predictable than a high-level discussion about 'businessprocess reengineering', for example. However, we do not yet have any experience orempirical results from system implementations based on the genre concepts to validate thesehypotheses further within this paper.

16

Maxim 8: Thou shalt be critically self-reflective on every aspect of information systemsdevelopment.The actual performance of a technological application with regard to control and prediction,mutual understanding and emancipation has to be actively monitored (Hirschheim et al.,1995) Accordingly, the changes needed in the technology, language, organisationalarrangements and the systems development methodology used have to be again criticallydebated (Ngwenyama, 1991).

An in-depth analysis of organisational document genres could be an enlightening experiencefor information systems designers. For example, by rapidly viewing the 350 document genresof the target organisation, the three participants in the field experiment noticed that theirknowledge on a large number of document genres was insufficient to decide whichtechnology for document management should be adopted. This led them to realise the needfor wide participation by both the employees using particular genres at work and thedesigners of enterprise document management. For example, the development of anenterprise document management system could now proceed by identification anddevelopment of a genre (and genre system) at a time instead of organisation-widetechnological decisions or standards often based on fuzzy, shallow and implicit knowledgeabout "organisational needs". At the discussion level of method reconsideration andengineering, explicit identification of fundamental concepts provides a rigorous basis for acritical debate about improving or changing a development methodology for, and even anapproach to, information systems.

Deficiencies of this study and the genre conceptsAltogether, the genre theory and the fundamental concepts grounded on it seem to provide aplenty of practical means to fulfil the identified maxims of the critical approach. However,many challenges need to be overcome in promoting the ideas above into information systemspractice. Tyrväinen & Päivärinta (1999) noted that going through all the document genres ofa large organisation in a systematic way would take a major effort and require participationfrom many domain experts throughout the organisation. The framework and tool for theanalysis of organisational document genres had only been grounded upon research literatureincorporating only a trial in analysing eleven document genres for the practical developmentof enterprise document management. Any analytical tool for promoting practical genreanalysis for information systems development should provide relevant features from morepractical viewpoints to be analysed about each genre, as well as provide ease, efficiency andunambiguity of use so that a continuous and critical genre analysis would not hinder everydaybusiness of the organisation.

A deficiency of the genre concepts has something to do with the fundamental notion of genreitself. Genres identified are categorising actual instances of communication and documents toabstract typologies surely losing some richness of the actual communication and utilisation ofinformation in the day-to-day life. Also technological support needed for personal, unshareddocuments and casual, spontaneous, communication (often promoting work) has to berecognised by using other fundamental concepts. If a piece of unformal communication orpersonal information is explicitly defined as an 'official' communicative or document genre(and genre system), it is not that casual, spontaneous or personal any more. Thus, this paperdoes not suggest that the genre concepts alone should be regarded as fundamental within thecritical approach and debate. However, the author does regard genres of documents and othercommunication as one essentially fundamental viewpoint and component to think criticallyabout contemporary, either extensive or small-scale, information systems.

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5. Conclusion and further researchIn the era of ubiquitous information technology, extensive information systems and rapidlydeveloped small-scale applications, the genre theory provides practice-oriented fundamentalconcepts for information systems development capable of fulfilling many goals and guidingprinciples of Critical Social Theory. Especially, the genre concepts serve as a means forconceptualising information systems at a detailed level, as the presented example ofrethinking enterprise document management was able to demonstrate. However, much workwill be needed especially for designing and implementing actual information systemsapplications which adopt the genre concepts in practice to elaborate the presented ideasfurther.

Further research will take place in an industrial research program where practical methodsand tools for designing enterprise document management are developed and promoted.Document genres will be identified and analysed at different levels of normative scope todesign and implement social practices and technological applications supporting documentmanagement and utilisation in digital media. One interesting stream of future research wouldbe to identify universal, contingent and situational features of genres and genre systems ofdocuments, transient communication and explicable knowledge to be analysed in connectionwith information systems planning and development. The defined features would be usefulfor constructing a comprehensive framework and tool for holistic, still critical, planning anddesign of information systems in organisations based on genre identification and analysis.

AcknowledgementsThe author would like to thank Airi Salminen, Pasi Tyrväinen, Richard Boland and especiallythree anonymous reviewers of the Critical Management Studies Conference for their criticalbut very constructive comments. Finnish Technology Development Centre has partiallyfinanced this research.

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Appendix 1: The framework of facets and paradigmatic categories to scrutinisea "document" or a document genre (Päivärinta & Tyrväinen 1998, Tyrväinen &Päivärinta 1999)

Facet Paradigmatic categoriesProductionPurpose of Production a) to store objective information,

b) to represent author's intentions or ideas,c) purposes to be defined later by the hypothetical user,d) renewal of existing documents,e) media for co-ordination

Recorder of Contents a) human author,b) human recorder,c) automated

Intended Life-Span a) permanent,b) defined,c) transient

Produced Structure a) a self-contained document unit,b) units with pre-defined access paths,c) a sub-document unit

UsePurpose of Use a) to observe facts,

b) to observe the meaning intended by the creator of adocument or document-type,c) to interpret recorded data,d) to reuse,e) media for co-ordination

Target Time of Observations a) event recorded,b) structure, knowledge or data,c) state

ProcessingProcessing for Retrieval a) as is,

b) aggregated,c) processed

Changes to Documents a) fixed,b) changing,c) dynamic

StorageDocument Architecture a) contents only,

b) presentation only,c) contents and presentation information (andstructure),d) contents and logical structure,e) contents, presentation and logical structure,f) compound documents

Criteria for Document Units a) material,b) medium,c) produced unit,d) logical, defined in advance,e) computational / retrieval

Medium a) one medium per document,b) transformations,c) multimedia document

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Appendix 2: The code for the analysis of a document genre (Tyrväinen &Päivärinta 1999)

2;2 The category prevailing at the moment, also desired to be it in the future for thedocument genre under analysis

2;1 The category prevailing at the moment, desired to be possible also in the future2;0 The category prevailing at the moment, not desired at all in the future1;2 The category possible at the moment, desired to be prevailing in the future1;1 The category possible at the moment, also desired to be it in the future1;0 The category possible at the moment, not desired at all in the future0;2 The category does not exist yet, desired to be prevailing in the future0;1 The category does not exist yet, desired to be possible in the future0 The category not present for the document genre now nor in the future

Appendix 3: The analysis tool based on annotating each of the paradigmaticcategories of each facet with the ratings 0, 1 or 2 for both current and futurecircumstances of a document genre (Tyrväinen & Päivärinta 1999)

Purpose of Production Recorder ofContents

Analyser Store

objectiveinformation

Representauthor'sintentions

For lateruse /purposes

Renewalofexisting

MediaforCo-operation

Human author Humanrecorder

Automated

Active sales initiativesArt 0 2;2 0 0 0 2;2 0 0M&T 0 2;2 0 0 1;1 2;2 0 0

Information about ongoing development projectsArt 2;2 1;1 0 0 1;1 0 2;0 0;2

Informationelement /Document genre

Paradigmatic category Facet

Current situation Future / desired situation

In this case the document genre 'Information about ongoing development projects' iscurrently considered to pose the category Human recorder in the facet Recorder ofcontents, while the desired shift would be towards the Automated recording of documentcontents. The recorder of the contents could be an automated procedure simply counting thenumber of development initiatives executed from the reports in organisation-wide LotusNotes database, where each of the development initiatives was expected to be reported. So farthe information of all ongoing development initiatives were not completely captured in thedatabase, hence the information had to be produced by humans. (Tyrväinen & Päivärinta1999)

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Appendix 4: The Analysis Table (Tyrväinen & Päivärinta 1999)

Purpose of Production Intented life-span Purpose of use Target time of observ. Changes to documents Criteria for document unitsRecorder of contents Produced structure Processing for retrievalDocument architecture Medium

Anal. a b c d e a b c a b c a b c a b c d e a b c a b c a b c a b c d e f a b c d e a b c Active sales initiatives (from Sales to All organizational units)Art 0 2;2 0 0 0 2;2 0 0 0 0 2;2 1;2 0 0 1;1 2;2 0 0 0 0 2;1 1;2 2;2 0 0 2;2 0 0 0 2;2 0 0 0 0 0 0 2;2 0 0 2;2 0 0M&T 0 2;2 0 0 1;1 2;2 0 0 0 2;0 0;2 2;2 0 0 2;2 1;1 0 0 0 0 2;1 1;2 2;2 0 0 2;2 0 0 0 2;2 0 0 0 0 0 0 2;2 0 0 2;2 0 0 Information about ongoing development projects (from Business development to All organizational units)Art 2;2 1;1 0 0 1;1 0 2;0 0;2 0 2;2 0 2;0 0 0;2 1;1 0 2;2 0 0 1;1 2;1 1;2 2;0 0 0;2 0 2;0 0;2 0 0 0 0 2;2 0 0 0 2;0 0;2 0 2;2 0 0M&T The analysers did not consider themselves to have enough insight of this document genre to analyse it further As-built product documentation (from Engineering unit to Project management)Art 2;2 0 1;1 1;1 0 2;2 0 0 2;2 0 0 0 0 2;2 2;2 0 0 1;1 0 2;2 0 0 2;1 1;2 0 2;2 0 0 0 2;1 0 1;2 0 0;2 0 0 2;1 1;2 0 0 2;1 1;2M&T 2;2 0 0 0 1;1 2;2 0 0 2;2 0 0 2;2 0 0 2;2 0 0 0 1;1 2;2 0 0 2;2 0 0 2;2 0 0 0 2;2 0 0 0 0 0 0 2;2 0 0 2;2 1;1 0 Instructions (for information technology adoption and use) (from Information management to All organizational units)Art 1;1 2;2 1;0 1;0 1;1 2;2 0 0 0 2;2 0 2;2 1;1 0 1;1 2;2 0 0 1;1 0 2;1 0;2 2;2 0;1 0 2;1 1;2 0 2;1 0 0 1;1 0 1;2 0 0 2;1 1;2 0 1;2 2;1 0;1M&T The analysers did not consider themselves to have enough insight of this document genre to analyse it further Reduction rates (of contract tool suppliers) (from Tool purchasing team to Production units)Art 2;2 0 0 1;1 0 2;2 0 0 0 2;2 0 2;1 0 1;2 2;2 0 0 0 0 0 2;2 0 2;0 0;2 0 2;0 0;2 0 0;2 2;0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2;0 0;2 0 2;2 0 0M&T 2;2 0 0 0 0 2;2 0 0 0 2;2 0 2;2 0 0 2;2 0 0 0 0 0 2;2 0 2;2 0 0 2;2 0 0 0 2;2 0 0 0 0 0 0 2;2 0 0 2;2 0 0 Request for archival (from All organizational units to Archiving function)Art 0 0 0 0 2;2 0 2;2 0 1;1 0 2;2 2;2 0 0 0 0 0 0 2;2 2;2 0 0 2;2 0 0 2;2 0 0 1;1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2;2 0 0 2;2 0 0M&T The analysers did not consider themselves to have enough insight of this document genre to analyse it further Request for archived document (from All organizational units to Archiving function)Art 0 0 0 0 2;2 2;2 0 0 1;1 0 2;2 2;2 0 0 0 0 0;1 0 2;2 2;2 0 0 2;2 0 0 2;2 0 0 2;2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2;2 0 0 2;2 0 0M&T The analysers did not consider themselves to have enough insight of this document genre to analyse it further Schedule (for engineering) (from Sales or Project management to Engineering unit)Art 2;2 1;1 0 ?;1 1;1 2;2 0 0 0 2;2 0 2;1 0 0;2 1;1 1;1 1;1 1;1 0 0 2;1 0;2 2;0 1;2 0;1 2;0 1;1 0;2 0 2;0 0 0;2 0 0 0 0 2;1 0;2 0 2;2 0 0M&T 0;1 0 0 1;1 2;2 2;2 0 0 1;1 2;2 0 2;2 0 0;1 1;1 0 0 0;1 2;2 0 2;2 0;1 2;1 1;2 0 1;1 2;2 0 0;1 2;1 0 0;2 0 0;1 0 0 2;1 0;2 0 2;2 1;1 0 Schedule (for subcontractors' engineering) (from Engineering unit to Subcontractors)Art 1;1 1;1 0 0 2;2 2;2 0 0 0 2;2 0 2;2 0 0 2;2 1;1 0 0 1;1 0 2;2 0 2;1 0;2 0 2;1 1;2 0 0 2;0 0 0;2 0 0 0 0 2;1 0;2 0 2;2 1;0 0M&T 1;2 0 0 1;1 2;1 2;2 0 0 1;1 2;2 0 2;2 0 0;1 1;2 0 0 1;1 2;1 0 2;2 0 2;2 0 0 0;2 2;1 0 0 2;1 0 0;2 0 0 0 0 2;2 0 0 2;2 1;1 0 Schedule (of planned installation and start) (from Project management to Customer)Art 0 1;1 1;0 0 2;2 2;2 0 0 0 2;2 0 2;2 0 0 1;1 2;2 0 0 1;1 1;2 2;1 0 2;2 0 0 2;1 1;2 0 0 2;2 0 0 0 0 0 0 2;2 0 0 1;1 2;2 0M&T 0 0 0 0 2;2 2;2 0 0;1 0 2;2 0 2;2 0 0;1 1;1 0 0 0 2;2 2;2 1;1 0 2;2 0;1 0 2;2 1;1 0 0 2;2 0 0 0 0 0 0 2;2 0 0 2;2 1;1 0 Schedule (of production) (from Engineering unit to Sales)Art This document genre was not analysed by ArtM&T 0;1 1;1 0 0 2;2 2;1 0 1;2 0 2;2 0 2;1 0 0;2 0 1;1 0 0 2;2 0 2;2 0 2;1 0;2 0 0;1 2;2 0 0;1 1;0 0 0;2 2;0 0;1 0 0 2;1 0;2 0 2;2 1;1 0