5) Internal messages

The main genre categories represented by the internal

email messages in our data, were not so many. We found

rather obvious genres like the internal job proposal, the

organizational announcement, the call for internal events

(like seminars, courses etc.). We also found more

problematic ones, e.g. messages related to meetings, like

call for meeting and minutes from meetings. Here we

think of the meeting as a genre in itself (or several specific

genres, e.g. the board meeting, the project meeting, the

unit meeting), but related to the meeting is a system of

genres like oral presentation, minutes, etc. We will not

address these as such here, but some of the genres we

discuss will relate to different sorts of meetings.

The largest part of the messages could be considered as

informal conversation that we do not consider as a genre.

An interesting finding was that quite many of the internal

informal conversations were discussing or negotiating

which genres to use in particular situations. We call these

messages/dialogues for conversations referring to a genre.

We will discuss these later, but we will shortly describe

the genres referred to in these conversations.

a)Internal job proposal

The job proposal is a kind of generic genre, commonly

recognized, with a specific structure. However, the job

proposals that were sent as email messages internally

were of a different kind than traditional job proposals,

they were more of a role proposal. We saw five such

proposals, all concerning project leadership. This meant

that you had to be an employee to apply for these internal

job proposals, although they have almost the same format

as ordinary job proposals.

• Purpose: To attract applications for jobs, mainly in

projects for a limited time

• Structure: They always contain these elements:

− A header with a reference number followed by a

short name for the responsible person, e.g. 9814-

02 BOBSM if Bob Smith is the responsible

person.

− Name, phone, organizational and geographical

location of ”customer”;

− Mission description;

− Appointment category: tick one or some of

systems development, communication, MIS,

CLASS, or business development);

− Mission category: tick one or some of formulating

directives, pilot study, planning, realization,

maintenance.;

− Range in terms of time and budget;

− Requirements on qualifications;

− Client/financier;

The internal job proposal (or project assignment

proposal) is closely related to the project organization, its

main purpose is to attract the right people to fill the open

slots in a project. Strangely enough the internal job

applications are not announced on the intranet.

b)Call for participation

Internally there are also calls for participation, mainly

regarding internal seminars, internal courses. These calls

have almost the same status as external calls, i.e. they are

not demanding in the sense that a summon for a project

meeting is.

• Purpose: to attract people to come to an (non

obligatory) internal event;

• Structure: Usually contains the elements: Theme and

type of event (course, seminar, tutorial etc.), target

group, place, time, short descriptive text introducing

speaker and topic, agenda, price, a form to be filled in

for registration;

c)Organizational announcement

Organizational announcements are announcements

made by people who have the authority to speak for the

organization by means of their function within the

organization.

• Purpose:

To

distribute

information

regarding

institutional

policies,

procedures

and

other

organizational information;

• Structure: Mostly quite simple: a main purpose and a

set of paragraphs covering distinct pieces of

information;

The most profound example of this is the internal

Newsmemo, that is regularly sent out to the whole

organization by the information department (with the

mail-id ”informer”). The news concerns organizational

changes, and different kinds of internal information. The

newsmemos are also distributed on paper, placed in racks

at the entrances of the company.

During the week we saw five messages that could be

considered as organizational announcements. Message

number 9 were describing a reorganization of the part of

the IT-company in the UK.

Message nr 36 is the regular Newsmemo nr 5-98. It

contains five main news. A description of the new

organization, and its parts unit, department and group.

Together with this is a reminder, that anyone interested

in taking managerial responsibilities, should respond to a

separate formatted Memo-message. The second news item

is a reminder to all departments that not already are

present on the intranet to create home pages. The third

news item is information about the recent deal with

employees to buy inexpensive home computers (PCs). A

FAQ list is promoted on this topic. The fourth news is

about large changes in the Memo system itself. Parts of

these news is also found on the intranet.

A message (nr 55) from the central computer

maintenance department about the changes in the Memo-

system

is

another

example

of

organizational

announcements.

As already mentioned, any user could not send

messages like these, distributed to the whole organization

or a whole unit, if they want to do this they must send

the message to informer who decides if it is important.

Project report

The full project report could take several forms. The

most common form is ”the technical report” which is

rather direct, it focuses on the techniques investigated and

does not use many references. A not so common

alternative is to write the report more like a research

report or a research paper, with more argumentation, and a

more strict style of making references to others work.

Whether a simpler technical style or a scientific style is

chosen, the full project report needs to be supplemented

with a project report summary.

• Purpose: To disseminate project results;

• Structure: Technical or scientific;

d)Project report summary

In addition to the full project report you are obliged to

submit a summary according to a specific format. The

summary must not exceed 2 pages.

• Purpose: To give an easy interpretable overview of

project results;

• Structure (may not be altered):

− A set of headers to be filled with specific

information:

Review

of

report

(preprinted

alternatives who the report should be sent to

according to topic); Issuer; Bulletin title (name

used

in

funding

application);

Job

code;

Information; Product/Service

− Headers concerning the contents of the report:

Condition and background (obtained from funding

application); Objectives (obtained from funding

application); Results (have they been achieved?);

Training; The next step (how will the results be

utilized); Information (individuals who can supply

more information)

e)Oral presentation of project report

In addition to the full project summary you are obliged

to make a short oral presentation at the R&D council

meeting. There are a couple of R&D-councils organized

around certain topics, e.g. communications, data mining

etc. Each R&D-council consists of 7 or 8 managers, and

is responsible for reviewing project proposals in their

area.

• Purpose: To brief the R&D council about the results

from the project;

• Structure: 10-20 minutes oral presentation at the

regular R&D council’s meeting;

f)The claim

A claim is a specific way to apply for project money.

First you must to write a short project specification

according to a standard claim template. The written

application should be short (1-2 pages) and include the

aim of the project, background, time plan, required

resources and expected results. The written application is

submitted to one of the internal R&D-councils.

Then at the monthly R&D-council meeting, you must

give a 20 minutes oral ”claim”, after which the R&D-

council will take the decision whether or not to grant the

claim. Thus, you know if the project is granted before

leaving the meeting. A claim could range from applying

for several million dollars for special equipment to the

permission to use your own working hours as only

resource. Since all employees are paid their salary

anyway, the claim functions as a way to legitimize the

use of company time for a certain project. This

legitimization process is linked to the project

organization.

• Purpose:

To

get

project

money

and/or

legitimization of a project;

• Structure:

The written application should be short

(1-2 pages) and include the aim of the project,

background, time plan, required resources and

expected results. The oral claim is limited to 20

minutes and should cover the same topics as the