Theorizing Structure and Agency in Workplace Writing: An Ethnomethodological Approach
http://jbt.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/16/2/170
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  peer-reviewed

Schneider, Barbara
Journal of Business and Technical Communication
2002

Abstract:

This article proposes ethnomethodology as a theoretical approach for resolving the structure-agency binary and for treating the activities of writers in organizations as simultaneously embedded in and constitutive of organizational context. Structure is defined asthose elements of social circumstances that writers orient to as relevant to their immediatewriting task. In orienting to these elements, writers reproduce them as external andconstraining social facts. The value of ethnomethodology is illustrated with data from astudy examining the social practices that surrounded the writing of an evaluation reportby two managers in an educational institution.