Discussion: View Thread

Organizer: Beth Bechky; New York U.
Organizer: Anca Metiu; ESSEC Business School
Discussant: JoAnne Yates; MIT Sloan

The goal of this symposium is to start a discussion about the role of writing in organizational processes and to engage in careful conceptual and empirical work to help us investigate how writing supports the sharing and development of knowledge, and the co-construction of meaning and identity within and between communities. We therefore examine these issues at various levels of analysis, ranging in focus from a micro-level of words and phrases to the meso-level of practices and mechanisms to the macro-level of communities (internal and external, collocated and distributed). The presentations highlight different uses of the written word in organizations and communities – how creativity is created virtually over new media on an open innovation platform, how knowledge workers create professional identities through digital traces, how forensic analysts' inscribe knowledge and identity in written reports, and how identity is created discursively within a community learning network.

More than a trace: the power of written words in knowledge development   
Presenter: Anca Metiu; ESSEC Business School
Presenter: Anne-Laure Fayard; New York U.

Inscribed Work: Mobile Professionalism in and through Information Infrastructures   
Presenter: Ingrid Erickson; Rutgers U.

From scientific 'truth' to legal 'proof': Writing reports in forensic science   
Presenter: Beth Bechky; New York U.

The Generativity of Words: Linguistic framing and the opening and closing of discourse   
Presenter: Stanley Deetz; U. of Colorado