Guest Editors' Introduction: Rationalizing and Rhetoricizing Content Management

Abstract

While content management systems (CMSs) might be a new concept to many people in our field, content management as a practice within our discipline is not; our field has been studying it and practicing it for years, though under different headings: single sourcing, knowledge management, and course management (such as in the form of WebCT and Blackboard). We started our work on this special issue with a rather ambitious mission-to bring together some diverse perspectives on content management and CMSs, to both theorize and operationalize the content management practice, and to rationalize our participation in the broad domain of content management discourse. Grounded on the premise that technical communication requires information and knowledge management, this special issue is one of the first systematic and deliberate attempts to extend our perspectives, both theoretical and practical, about technical communication from the relatively static sphere of document design to the more dynamic horizon of content (information/knowledge) management. UNDERSTANDING CONTENT MANAGEMENTContent management, broadly defined, refers to the "process of collecting, managing, and publishing information to whatever medium you need" (Boiko, 2005, p. xv). A content management system, then, is any systematic method designed to organize and distribute information, while content management system software automates the system, typically providing "a platform for managing the creation, review, filing, updating, distribution, and storage of structured and unstructured content" (White, 2002, p. 20). The industry of information management and distribution is increasingly interested in CMSs, as witnessed by the ninth annual Content Management

Enterprise Content Management technologies supporting unified businesses

“…A few interviews were conducted in locations other than the organization, which were more convenient to participants. This research has answered the call for more in-depth academic case studies reporting on ECMS-use in practice [13,[31][32][33]. Although there have been a few studies that provide descriptions about ECMS-use [20,34,35], hitherto none has specifically combined the business process perspective with Orlikowski's practice lens theory.…”

Exploring the use of Enterprise Content Management Systems in replication types of organizations

“…However, although organizations invest large amounts of money in implementing ECMS, previous research indicates that many ECMS implementations fail to yield the kind of information that management originally envisaged for the execution of business processes [8][9][10][11][12]. A few researchers mention that ECMS implementation failures can be attributed to the fact that practitioners often focus more on the technology aspects of ECM systems during implementation, and less on understanding how ECMS can actually be used to support business processes [13,14].…”

Remaking the Pitch: Reuse Strategies in Entrepreneurs’ Pitch Decks

“…More recently, it has been discussed extensively in the literature on content management systems [1], [17]; [18]; [49]; [60]; [32]. As Swarts [83] and Slattery [71] argue, verbatim reuse may appear arhetorical and acontextual, but still involves rhetorical choices; it involves borrowing the authority of the original authors, using it to "shape the uptake of the content they are used to deliver" ( [83], p.149).…”