Dush sees genre similarly to the rest of the field as genres in response to recurring situations. “Looking at textual innovations with genre theory requires a major shift, in that the focus is not on an existing, long-standing genre, but a potential genre—a response that might be paired with a number of recurrent organizational situations and activities…By analyzing these temporary genre stabilizations to see if and how the new textual practice fits, clashes with, or offers new possibilities within these recurrent situations and activities, implementers can get a glimpse of whether the new practice has potential as an organizational genre” (5). She does not believe, however, that all genres are rhetorical. For her, rhetorical means that there is an audience intended outside of the writer.
She maintains that “an organization and its genre ecologies mutually define or co-constitute each other—the genre ecologies reflect the organization and the organization reflects its genre ecologies…[O]rganizations are made up of people, social roles, values, norms, materials, and discourse; most all of these contextual factors are linked to and realized within genre ecologies” (7)
The genre inventory includes looking at textual substance and form (themes, topics, structural features, media incorporated, language), cognitive and discourse practices (mental and language practices and skills used), social practices (who is involved and their social roles), and material practices (where is activity happening? What stools are being used? What documents and genres are used and/or referred to?) (10). The assessor looks at these areas before, during and after implementation.
Dush also argues that this kind of implementation encouraged innovation. “The greatest advantage of a genre-informed implementation analysis is that it encourages sustained engagement with an innovation, engagement with the sort of depth that helps implementers learn about the needs of both the organization and the people within it…As Brenton Faber (2002) noted, ‘when people transgress genres, violate boundaries, and break with routine practices, change becomes possible’ (p. 172). In other words, new textual practices, although they face considerable obstacles to long-term sustainability, also bring with them the possibility of altering the range of individual action and large-scale activities in an organization” (14).