GENRE REPERTOIRE - THE STRUCTURING OF COMMUNICATIVE PRACTICES IN ORGANIZATIONS

In this paper we propose the notions of genre and genre repertoire as analytic tools for investigating the structuring of communicative prac tices within a community, As organizing structures, genres shape and a re shaped by individuals' communicative actions. Our empirical study e xamined the communication exchanged by a group of distributed knowledg e workers in a multiyear, interorganizational project conducted primar ily through electronic mail. We found that the genre repertoire of thi s community revealed a rich and varied array of communicative practice s that members shaped and changed in response to community norms, proj ect events, time pressure, and media capabilities. Our analysis establ ishes the concepts of genre and genre repertoire as a means of underst anding communicative action as a central aspect of a community's organ izing process.