FIORELLA FOSCARINI

UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM

KVAN–DAGEN 2015

Records as tools for making and sharing

knowledge in organizations

2

Overview

Topics: Knowledge creation and transmission in organizations Collaboration Identity construction

Conceptual framework: Rhetorical genre studies Activity theory Distributed cognition Situated learning

Goal: To enhance our understanding of record-making and -

keeping as socially and culturally situated practice

3

Genre theory

Traditional genre theory Focus: Regularities of form, topic, audience, situation

observable in literary texts and rhetorical speeches Purpose: Classification (taxonomies)

Rhetorical genre studies Focus: Regularities of activities that shape, and are

shaped by, the form and substance of non-literary forms of writing and speaking

Purpose: Understanding the interplay between ‘texts’ and human action

4

What is genre?

“A genre of organizational communication is a typified communicative action invoked in response to a recurrent situation” Conventions that a community establishes as ways of

acting together Means of orientation

Genre is both the text and the contextEach community defines its genresAcquiring genre knowledge is essential to

participate in the communities we inhabit

5

Genres as cultural tools

Activity theory looks at human activities as complex, situated phenomena, which are always mediated by culturally constructed tools (= genres)

Cultural tools (incl. written documents, face-to-face meetings, electronic systems) allow collaboration by mediating our actions and motives

Tools only exist as tools-in-use The meaning of a record (or system, process, etc.) can

only be understood when it is observed in action

6

Activity system

Mediating Tool(written/spoken text, gesture, machine,

etc.)

Human Agent(individual, group)

Purpose(object/motive)

Outcome

7

Creating and transmitting knowledge

Knowledge building is a highly rhetorical and controversial activity

Use of shared cultural tools is a dynamic and interactive process, always involving some tension Knowledge transfer Knowledge transformation

Genres are knowledge-bearing tools that allow people to think and act together in ways that are much more powerful than would be possible without them

However, actions and power are continuously negotiated

8

Collaboration and distributed cognition

Knowing, learning and thinking are distributed among co-participants, as well as mediated through cultural tools Dynamic, powerful collaborative process Knowledge overlap and reciprocity Tension and multi-vocality Shaping of collective identities

9

Collective identity

Identity at the professional or corporate level is an ongoing, tool-mediated achievement, to which individual subjectivities, each having distinctive aims and power, contribute

In the workplace, learning-to-do = learning-to-beTheory of situated learning

Organizational learning is context-specific, informal and continuous (has little to do with explicit training measures)

People in organizations learn through active participation in social practices

Changes in knowledge and action are central to learning

10

Writing as situated practice

Organizational records are mostly the product of collaborative writing

Writing in the workplace is: Praxis-oriented (rather than learning-oriented) Institutional (rather than individual) Plural and contradictory (rather than singular and

coherent) Ideological (rather than merely communicative)

Consequently, authors feel less ownership of texts and less immediacy in terms of the rhetorical situation less effectiveness

11

Conclusion

“Genres are the intellectual scaffolds on which community-based knowledge is constructed”

Archival science (RM in particular) needs more interdisciplinary research and more studies of records-in-use

12

Amsterdam, July 29-31, 2015