02267nas a2200181   4500008004100000022001400041245012000055210006900175300001600244490000700260520146000267653001801727653002201745653003301767653001501800100002401815856024601839       2013                        eng d  a0170-840600aThe Pervasive Power of PowerPoint: How a Genre of Professional Communication Permeates Organizational Communication0 aPervasive Power of PowerPoint How a Genre of Professional Commun  a1777 - 18010 v343 a<p>This paper examines the pervasive role of Microsoft’s presentation software PowerPoint as a genre of professional and organizational communication. Frequently, PowerPoint is not only used for the primary function it was initially designed for, i.e., facilitating live presentations, but also for alternative purposes such as project documentation. Its application in a neighboring domain, however, poses a functional dilemma: does the PowerPoint genre preserve the features of its primary function, i.e., presentation, or rather adapt to the new function, i.e., documentation? By drawing on a communication-centered perspective, this paper examines PowerPoint’s role in the domain of project documentation as a clash between the constitutive affordances of professional and of organizational communication. To investigate this issue empirically, I conducted a case study at a multinational business consulting firm. The study allows identification of three distinct PowerPoint subgenres, which differ in how they adapt to the function of project documentation. This paper contributes to organization studies by specifying the boundary conditions under which a genre of professional communication such as PowerPoint can be expected to maintain its genre-inherent characteristics even in the face of contradictory organizational requirements and to impose these characteristics on a neighboring domain of organizational communication practices.</p>
10adocumentation10aoral presentation10aorganizational communication10apowerpoint1 aSchoeneborn, Dennis  uhttp://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0170840613485843http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0170840613485843http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0170840613485843http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/0170840613485843