Mutual Constitution of Genre and Knowledge: The case of genre resistance in the French diplomatic occupational community

Abstract

In this paper, we study the relationship between genre and knowledge in the dynamics of occupational resistance to genre change. Using critical genre analysis, we investigate the response of French diplomats to the introduction of modifications in a key institutionalized communicative practice, the diplomatic telegram. As the organization modified genre rules for knowledge distribution, the perceived loss of control over audience and purpose threatened the elite occupational community values of autonomy and secrecy. In response, diplomats subverted the new organizational communicative practices by invalidating its content through knowledge fragmentation, repetition, and depletion. At the same time, they enhanced the content of the hybrid new genre of the ‘political email’, through knowledge integration, differentiation, and amplification. Our work contributes to critical genre analysis by revealing the political dimension of organizational genre change for elite occupational communities. Also, in examining the relationship between genre and knowledge, we identified genre resistance mechanisms that (de)authorized communicative practices by (in)validating knowledge. Our work suggests that genre resistance is an essential tool for elite occupational communities, whose power depends on control over esoteric knowledge.

What We Do in the Shadows: How expert workers reclaim control in digitalized and centralized organizations through ‘stealth work’

“…Our study makes three contributions to the growing literature on the interplay between experts and managerial control (Baylon & Barros, 2023;Brivot, 2011;Currie et al, 2012;Huising, 2014Huising, , 2015Kellogg, 2019;Waring & Currie, 2009). First, we add a new set of stealthy and subtle tactics that experts use to reclaim control, which we conceptualize as 'stealth work'.…”