I was reading the above named chapter this week when I came across a line that reminded me of my previous life in England. The author, talking about how writing can bring about social change, stated: "modern organizations and professions are the products of written comunication" (p. 270), and I agree with this wholeheartedly. He discusses universities within the chapter, but I take a slightly different, but connected perspective here.
While in England I worked as a web-editor putting learning materials online in a local university. As part of my role I kept my eye on elearning articles and conferences and became aware of a struggle within the field of education - the struggle of how to define elearning. During a conference I attended, it became clear (to me anyway) that some universities had developed detailed policies and regulations to define their elearning perspective and direction, while others had not, and the ones that hadn't got anything down in writing seemed to be floundering about what direction to go in with their elearning departments. In essence, even though all of the universities had been conducting elearning and online instruction very successfully for many years, until someone defined it and put it in writing as a formal "policy" its place within the university was in doubt.
I think that all organisations, especially universities because they're the organisation I have most experience with, don't feel they are fully "defined" until they are defined in writing, perhaps to such an extent that nowadays universities are a product of their written documents rather than the other way around!! For example, here's a link to the "policies" webpage from my old university - some of the links open onto other pages with further policies (such as the IT policies): UWE website. Even Kent has a list as long as my arm of policies: KSU website.
Ok, so these policies have multiple purposes as they cover the university legally in a variety of ways, but I feel like these policies go some way to make the organisation a product of the writing rather than the other way around.
Organisations as a product of their writing occur in other areas as well. As the chapter states, "organizations exist only in so far as their members create them through discourse" (Mumby & Clair, 1997 as cited in Faber, 2005, p. 270). To my mind this means that every internal memo filed, every new webpage uploaded, every email sent within the organisation works as both "an expression and creation of organizational structure" (Mumby & Clair, 1997 as cited in Faber, 2005, p. 270).
I've already 'talked' too much (what's new!), but I think this notion is also true for people - individuals can also be seen as a product of their written communication. I think this has always been true, but I think it's especially true today because of the variety of online writing that is so connected to a person's identity, such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. We think that as we write we are creating a product (or often as we write online we completely forget that anything is being "produced"), when in fact, eventually, don't we become the product of our written communication?
Did this make sense?! Who knows at this point in the semester!!!
Perhaps the reason why organizations which put their policies in writing have more success is because the act of writing stimulates critical thinking. In drafting, revising, and publishing a mission statement or policy, an organization has to question its purpose and examine what it truly wants to accomplish. The act of creating a written document has impact because writing requires thinking about a policy, something which may not have occured prior to the organization's act of writing.
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