JoAnne Yates

Life in the Trading Zone: Structuring Coordination Across Boundaries in Postbureaucratic Organizations

In our study of an interactive marketing organization, we examine how members of different communities perform boundary-spanning coordination work in conditions of high speed, uncertainty, and rapid change. We find that members engage in a number of cross-boundary coordination practices that make their work visible and legible to each other, and that enable ongoing revision and alignment. Drawing on the notion of a trading zone, we suggest that by engaging in these practices, members enact a coordination structure that affords cross-boundary coordination while facilitating adaptability, speed, and learning. We also find that these coordination practices do not eliminate jurisdictional conflicts, and often generate problematic consequences such as the privileging of speed over quality, suppression of difference, loss of comprehension, misinterpretation and ambiguity, rework, and temporal pressure. After discussing our empirical findings, we explore their implications for organizations attempting to operate in the uncertain and rapidly changing contexts of postbureaucratic work.

It's About Time: Temporal Structuring in Organizations

In this paper we propose the notion of temporal structuring as a way of understanding and studying time as an enacted phenomenon within organizations. We suggest that through their everyday action, actors produce and reproduce a variety of temporal structures which in turn shape the temporal rhythm and form of their ongoing practices. A focus on temporal structuring, combined with a practice perspective, allows us to bridge the subjective-objective dichotomy that underlies much of the existing research on time in organizations. After developing the notion of temporal structuring, we illustrate its use in the context of a prior empirical study. We conclude by outlining some implications of temporal structuring for organizational research on time.

Corporate Blogging: Building community through persistent digital talk

Blogging has grown exponentially on the Internet; however, the role of blogs within the enterprise remains ambiguous. Why and how do individuals use internal corporate blogs? What results do both individuals and the corporation realize from internal blogs? Our exploratory study of a large global IT corporations internal blogging system analyzed usage statistics, interviews, and the results of an anonymous, Web-based survey. We found that benefits to users were social as well as informational, and that connecting with their community was an important value sought by all types of users. Heavy users of the system realized the greatest benefits, but they also constituted the core of an online community that provided important benefits to medium users as well

Helping CSCW applications succeed: the role of mediators in the context of use

This study found that the use of a computer conferencing system in an R&D lab was significantly shaped by a set of intervening actors—mediators—who actively guided and manipulated the technology and its use over time. These mediators adapted the technology to its initial context and shaped user interaction with it; over time, they continued to modify the technology and influence use patterns to respond to changing circumstances. We argue that well-managed mediation may be a useful mechanism for shaping technologies to evolving contexts of use, and that it extends our understanding of the powerful role that intervenors can play in helping CSCW applications succeed.

IText: Future Directions for Research on the Relationship between Information Technology and Writing.

Most people who use information technology (IT) every day use IT in text-centered interactions. In e-mail, we compose and read texts. On the Web, we read (and often compose) texts. And when we crea...Most people who use information technology (IT) every day use IT in text-centered interactions. In e-mail, we compose and read texts. On the Web, we read (and often compose) texts. And when we create and refer to the appointments and notes in our personal digital assistants, we use texts. Texts are deeply embedded in cultural, cognitive, and material arrangements that go back thousands of years. Information technologies with texts at their core are, by contrast, a relatively recent development. To participate with other information researchers in shaping the evolution of these ITexts, researchers and scholars must build on a knowledge base and articulate issues, a task undertaken in this article. The authors begin by reviewing the existing foundations for a research program in IText and then scope out issues for research over the next five to seven years. They direct particular attention to the evolving character of ITexts and to their impact on society. By undertaking this research, the authors urge the continuing evolution of technologies of text.

ICT and Organizational Change: A Commentary

This special issue of The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science addresses a critical issue in the study of modern organizations—the relationship between information and communication technology (ICT), on one hand, and organizational change, on the other. The editors of the special issue have assembled a rich set of articles considering this topic. In this commentary, we first briefly note several common themes across the articles, themes that we believe characterize increasingly agreed on approaches to the topic. Next, we highlight three themes that appear to a greater or lesser extent in the articles and that exhibit what we consider particularly important and promising approaches to studying ICTs in organizations: making systems workable, dealing with materiality, and focusing on practice. We end by highlighting how these three themes interrelate.

Temporal coordination through communication: using genres in a virtual start‐up organization

Purpose – To explain how genres structure temporal coordination in virtual teams over time.Design/methodology/approach – The first year e‐mail archive of a small distributed software development start‐up was coded and analyzed and these primary data were complemented with interviews of the key participants and examination of notes from the weekly phone meetings.Findings – In this paper, it is found that members of a small start‐up organization temporally coordinated their dispersed activities through everyday communicative practices, thus accomplishing both the distributed development of a software system and the creation of a robust virtual team. In particular, the LC members used three specific genres – status reports, bug/error notifications, and update notifications – and one genre system – phone meeting management – to coordinate their distributed software development over time.Research limitations/implications – The study confirms the various suggestions from prior virtual team research that structu...

The Emergence of the Memo as a Managerial Genre

This article traces the historical evolution of the memorandum as a genre of written communication in American business during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It draws on published and unpublished materials from the period, including archival materials from E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company and Scovill Manufacturing Company. The historical analysis shows that the memo developed from the letter, not for reasons related to rhetorical theory, but as a practical response to two sets of developments: (1) the emergence of new managerial theory and techniques, and (2) innovations in the technology of written communication. The study also reveals a significant lag between the actual emergence of the genre and its recognition in instructional materials in communication.

Conversational Coherence in Instant Messaging and Getting Work Done

This paper explores the critical role conversational coherence plays in facilitating the ongoing, distributed work of one virtual team as they engage in instant messaging (IM) conversations to communicate, coordinate, and collaborate. In studying the IM conversations of team members over the course of a month, a number of challenges to coherence emerged as they communicated with each other and worked together. These challenges include two previously identified challenges - lack of simultaneous feedback, and disrupted turn adjacency - and two additional challenges: multi-tasking, and authority. We describe the teams responses to these challenges and conclude by discussing implications for research

From Press Book and Pigeonhole to Vertical Filing: Revolution in Storage and Access Systems for Correspondence

This article describes the development in early twentieth century American businesses of modern vertical filing, using the development in Scovill Man ufacturing Company as an example. The chronological press book of cop ies of outgoing correspondence and the haphazardly arranged pigeonholes and boxes full of incoming correspondence could not handle the increasing amount of correspondence late in the nineteenth century. A series of changes in methods of producing and reproducing documents led up to the change in methods of storing and gaining access to them. The new vertical filing system affected the format and content of external correspondence and encouraged the evolution of inter- and intradepartmental correspon dence. The changes in the communication structure in this period have im plications for changes now in progress as office automation advances.