Using Genre Systems to Investigate the Interplay Between Technology-in-Practice and the Knowledge Management Practices of Lawyers

Our purpose is to incorporate recent theorizing on the connection between people, technology and organizations into a framework using the genre perspective of communicative action, and to illustrate how professional organizations represent an under-researched and ideal context in which to conduct investigations using this framework. The framework directs our attention to the resource aspects of genre in addition to the rule aspects highlighted within the extant literature employing a structurational view of genre. By drawing upon an ongoing longitudinal study of the interplay between a document management system and the professional practices of lawyers in a multi-site law firm we illustrate the use of the framework and demonstrate how the analytic lens of genre systems can be usefully applied to the legal case file.