Review of Business Communication Research: Past, Present, and Future

The Roman mythological figure usually depicted as having two faces, one in the back of his
head looking to the past and the other in the front looking toward the future, is an apt
metaphor for the goals of the Publications Board of the Association for Business
Communication’s (ABC) special session at the 2005 annual meeting in Irvine, California.
Despite these gains in new knowledge, Daphne Jameson pointed out that business and
managerial communication researchers need to provide practitioners with a better
understanding of best practices.

As one session participant pointed out, the concepts and theories that the research creates can
open new windows for managers to see their communication worlds differently and provide a
new way of thinking about managerial communications.
What contributes to the field’s lack of a research identity is that the authors teach and do
research in significantly different departments and schools: English, business and
management, speech communications, and even information technology.
To solve this identity problem, Janis Forman suggested that the authors need to be aligned
with a business function to be seen as important or relevant and to help them find a consistent
or definable research voice.

Creating that discipline will give them a research identity that will differentiate them from
other disciplines, give the journals a clearer sense of focus, and enable the members to speak
with a clearer voice about what contributions to communication knowledge and practice the
authors provide.

Several session participants indicated that the authors need to go into business organizations
and shadow first-line supervisors, midlevel managers, and support staff members to
understand communication problems in the context of other organizational processes and
systems. Several session participants working in Europe stated that, in addition to drawing
research agendas from multicultural and multinational companies, researchers can discover
useful and relevant areas to explore by looking outside of business organizations. This
session helped remind them of the significant strides that the research has made in the past 20
years in terms of understanding how communication works in business.

The session made painfully clear that the authors have significant work ahead of them if the
colleagues in related disciplines are to recognize and value the work and, most important, if
businesspeople will see the utility of the research and turn to them to help understand and
solve their communication problems.
As several session participants pointed out, the lack of PhD programs makes it difficult to
develop the ongoing research talent needed to create the knowledge that will give the field a
sense of purpose and recognition.
Conclusions

This session helped remind us of the significant strides that our research has made in the past
20 years in terms of understanding how communication works in business. We are far beyond
the rubrics, checklists, and simple statements about communication effectiveness that
characterized much of our work in the early to mid-1980s. However, the session made
painfully clear that we have significant work ahead of us if our colleagues in related
disciplines are to recognize and value our work and, most important, if businesspeople will
see the utility of our research and turn to us to help understand and solve their communication
problems.
Three modest suggestions came from the session to begin the process of solving this identity
and value problem:

1. Write and publish more review articles and meta-analyses to provide us with a research
agenda that, if collectively pursued, would help us establish a research identity.

2. Do even more of our research in organizations (action research), share the results with
organizational members who have the power and resources to implement recommendations
stemming from those results, and serve as ongoing consultants and trainers to help implement
the recommendations.

3. Align business communication more clearly with a corporate function such as corporate
communication to make clear on a continuous basis that our work has a specific place and
hence an identity within business organizations.

To do this work, we need new blood. As several session participants pointed out, our lack of
PhD programs makes it difficult to develop the ongoing research talent needed to create the
knowledge that will give our field a sense of purpose and recognition. Europe has made a
modest start with the small international business communication PhD program at the
Helsinki School of Economics. More than likely, though, we will have to do what we have
done in the past: attract talented PhDs from other disciplines—English, speech
communication, rhetoric, organizational communication—to provide us with new research
blood. We can do so only if our field offers compelling research and provides some assurance
of an academic identity. That may be our greatest challenge.