TOWARD A TYPOLOGY OF ACTIVITIESClay Spinuzzi, University of Texas at Austin

Spinuzzi, C. (2011). Losing by Expanding: Corralling the Runaway Object. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 25(4), 449 – 486.

The problem: The expanding object

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Farming

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Engestrom and Escalante 1996

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Farming’s object is the field that is “transformed time and again from brute earth to crops of grain” (Engeström & Escalante 1996, p.360)

The activity of farming

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Seppanen 2004

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“The formal requirements forced the farmers to expand their object towards administrative agencies, rules and subsidies.” (p.32)

“Essentially, the object of organic vegetable farming is the process of making ‘raw materials’ into products and selling them to customers. The land, crops and the customers are part of the object. ... The concept of the object is by nature multifaceted.” (p.48)

“farmers construct their farming object, although the same in general terms, in different ways. … Although the object can be historically understood, it is not fixed.” (p.55)

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Global warming

The cycle of the expanding object

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AT typologies

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Historical progressions Engeström, Y. (1987) Engeström, Y. (2008) Yamazumi, K. (2009)

Matrices Engeström, Y., Brown, K., Christopher, L. C.,

& Gregory, J. (1997) Engeström, Y. (2008) Jarzabkowski, P. (2003)

Organizational typologies

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The Three Waves (Toffler 1980) Markets, Bureaucracies, and Clans (Ouchi

1980) TIMN (Ronfeldt 1996) C-Space (Boisot & Child 1999) Cynefin (Snowden & Boone 2007) Markets, Hierarchices, Collaborative

Communities (Adler & Heckscher 2007) Competing Values Framework (Cameron &

Quinn 2011)

How is the object defined? (tacitly or explicitly?)

Where is the object defined? (internal or external to the division of labor?)

The proposed typology

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A typology of activities

Hierarchies: explicit, internally defined objects

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Markets: explicit, externally defined objects

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Clans: implicit, internally defined objects

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Networks: implicit, externally defined objects

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A typology of activities

Interference patterns and internal contradictions

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Internal contradictions between types of activity

Artemeva and Freedman 2001: Clan vs. Hierarchy

Ding 2008: Market vs. Hierarchy Sherlock 2009: Network vs. Market

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Internal contradictions

Internal contradictions form where stakeholders’ perspectives on the object place it in different quadrants.

Different stakeholders have arrayed different activity systems to pulse the object as they perceive it in different ways.

Those activity systems have taken on different tools, rules, actors, divisions of labor, and communities; they have adopted different pulses with different cycles.

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Questions?

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