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By Ellen Pearlman
Strategic Thinkers: JoAnne Yates, Wanda Orlikowski, Anne Jackson
Credentials: Yates is Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management and Deputy Dean at the MIT Sloan School of Management; Orlikowski is Professor Information Technologies and Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School and also the Eaton-Peabody Professor Communication Sciences at MIT; Jackson holds an MBA from MIT Sloan School and is currently director of operations at Lattice Engines
Big Idea: New communications technologies can be assessed based on a risk/reward genre model
Article: "The Six Key Dimensions of Understanding Media," published by MIT Sloan Management Review, Winter 2008
Many new technologies find their way into the corporate world by way of enthusiastic users who have first adopted the technology for personal use. But before CIOs can feel comfortable adopting blogs, wikis, Second Life or Skype for business use, they must feel certain that they understand all the issues, risks and benefits. The Genre Model-introduced by JoAnne Yates, Wanda Orlikowski and Anne Jackson in their article "The Six Key Dimensions of Understanding Media," published in the Winter of 2008 by MIT Sloan Management Review-seeks to give IT executives a model for getting at all the key issues.
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The Genre Model is based on getting the answers to the following six dimensions (also used in good news reporting):
1. Why—Why are some employees using this new communication technology instead of the already available ones? What is the purpose of the communication occurring in this medium?
2. What—What will be communicated through this medium and what expectations will be associated with this content?
3. Who—Which participants are (or could be) involved and what are their roles?
4. Where—What is the location of the communication?
5.When—What are the temporal aspects of this communication; for example, how quickly is a response expected?
6. How—What is the manner and form in which a communication takes place (i.e. format, language, style and medium)?
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By examining several cases in their article, the authors explore how communication genres change over time and ultimately give birth to new forms (such as the memo which evolved into e-mail). Some models take a long time to develop-the memo genre, for example, emerged over a 50-year period.
Digital communication media is still in early stages of use with "both the technology and the social norms in considerable flux," according to the authors. One example of unexpected results is Blog Central, an IBM pilot project originally designed to be a self-publishing platform for employees. Initially, it was conceived as a way for employees to extract important information from e-mail and put it on the company's intranet. But the company discovered from a survey of its users that the key benefit was as a professional and company-networking tool. Employees used the system "to get the pulse of the organization," according to the authors, an unintended but significant result of the project. As a result of the lessons learned, IBM incorporated blogging technology into a Lotus Connections product. One of the key takeaways from this case is the importance of tracking how an emerging technology is used over time.
Another example looks at the use of Skype by MNI Partners, a boutique management-consulting company in Massachusetts. The partners are located on three continents and in order to stay in touch had a weekly conference call. But this was expensive, especially when partners called in via hotel connections or from cell phones incurring roaming charges for international calls. By using Skype, an Internet telephony service, phone expenses diminished by 70 percent. But it wasn't just the cost benefit the company noticed by using this communications technology, there were also new features to take advantage of what Skype offered-such as instant messaging and back channel one-on-one chat. There were some downsides, too, that might lead some companies to conclude this it's not the right solution for them-a limit to the number of lines included in the call, inferior voice quality and security concerns due to file-sharing capabilities.
Whether your organization decides to adopt these new communications technologies or not, it is good to have a rationale for your decision. Read more about this model.
Excerpts reprinted from "Six Key Dimensions of Understanding Media" by JoAnne
Yates, Wanda J. Orlikowski and Anne Jackson, MIT Sloan Management Review, Winter 2008, Vol. 49, No. 2, pp. 63-69, by permission of publisher. Copyright (c) 2008 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. All rights reserved.
Also of interest:
CIOZ Question: Does your organization officially sanction blogs? If so, how's it working out? If not, why not?
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