Emergent Patterns in Organizational Communication

All three conferences were organized using Murray’s framework, so we had a unique opportunity to observe how organizational communication, as a holistic discipline, has evolved over the previous 40 years. Furthermore, we believe that conference participants had the opportunity to identify important trends that create spaces for discussion that extended our approaches to the study of organizational communication. When reflecting back, selected papers from the 1976 and 1996 conferences are available in Salem (1999) and, to look forward, selected papers from the 2016 conference are available in Salem and Timmerman (in press). When we mention specific authors, their papers are part of one of those volumes.

The organizational communication domain has moved from constructs describing communication problems to a mix that includes constructs central to theories and paradigms. Put another way, the disciplinary domain appears to be less about understanding communication problems and more about seeing the field as one that can address problems as well as produce innovation that is oriented toward understanding processes, in general. The sharpest contrast is between Goldhaber’s 1999 communication audit summary with Putnam’s 1999 description of 11 research areas organized into three perspectives. In 2016, Kuhn emphasized the process and social nature of communication, and he argued for developing a communicative imagination revealing relevant and important problems. At the forefront of this current consideration of domain lies the work addressing the constitutive role of communication in organizations (e.g., McPhee & Zaug, 2000). These approaches offer advantages for understanding how we articulate the domain of organizational communication, but there are natural trade-offs with our ability to devise theory and research that offers precision of analysis or elegance and simplicity of presentation (i.e., Weick, 1979). In many ways, this complexity is a positive indicator of disciplinary development and in others, it may be a signal that our understanding of domain may require interpretation for more diverse, perhaps non-specialized, fields that would benefit from our theory and research.

Although there are advances in development of organizational communication theories across the 40 years, scholars continue borrowing theory from other research areas. At the first conference, Dance mapped organizational communication onto his functional human communication model, but the remaining authors borrowed theories from other behavioral sciences. Several borrowed at the second conference, but there were almost as many authors presenting frameworks on communication. The most recent conference featured similar patterns as the second albeit with heightened sophistication. Leonardi challenged researchers to develop high-impact theories with communication as the core defining feature of organizational processes, rather than as a metaphorical “lens” or subordinate component of theory. As with concern about domain, this drive to use communication as the core construct when devising theory to describe, explain, and predict organizational processes can prompt questions about whether some organizational processes are inherently communicative—an interesting discussion point for future theory.

Research methods developed in their diversity and complexity over 40 years. In 1996, Riley described four conversational threads framing research methods that are as relevant today as they were then. In 2016, Stephens described multiple methods and argued the newest scholars needed preparation in more than one methodology. Stephens’ work identifies these trends in Management Communication Quarterly, often viewed as one of the discipline’s premier publications. But, it is worth noting that organizational communication, as a discipline, appears to trend toward both greater breadth and depth in method, with work ranging from qualitative analysis describing complexities hidden organizations to advanced computational methods for which we are only beginning to imagine the range of applications.

The application panels were full at all three conferences, but researchers seldom systematically analyzed the best practices for communicating and organizing. Moving the application component of the discipline forward in a unique way, Tracy’s articulation of craft practice is itself an application and a means for extending future application. In retrospect, it would have been particularly exciting if Tracy’s work would have been devised by scholars as early as the 1976 conference. Typically, craft has not been part of research journals, and most case study volumes assist analysis but not action. This may be because craft research may be proprietary, or scholars may be reticent to give advice. Editors may be reluctant as well, and developing craft does not often seem to be a mission of many research journals.

Ethics remained a concern over the 40 years, although scholars seldom included ethics in their research unless the work was primarily centered on ethical analysis. As noted at previous conferences, and as Meisenbach further explains, previous work in the discipline may have some connection to ethical concerns but they are not pushed to the forefront. The advances explained by Meisenbach open our discussions of agency as an example of how ethics should be part of all research. There have been few publications about ethical organizational communication, but the numbers continue to increase over the 40 years, even if not always at the core of the work—something that may be changing as we move toward future iterations of this conference.

As disciplines evolve, there is a need for scholars and practitioners to address each other periodically about their emerging body of work. This dialogue has been about changes of direction and also about reminders to help others communicate better. The domain, theory, and methods continue to diversify and reconfigure more to understanding how communicating organizes rather than focus only on organizational issues. There have been consistent reminders to provide direction in how to communicate better—both practically and ethically. We appreciated this opportunity to work with the group of scholars who helped organize, present, and attended the conference and hope that the set of entries presented here will provide a point of reflection and inspiration for the organizational communication discipline.