The status of communication studies in organizational contexts: One rhetorician's lament after a year‐long odyssey

Abstract

This essay presents a series of impressions about the status of communication studies purporting to be done in or about organizational contexts, since roughly 1955, and is a radically condensed version of a year‐long study presented at the 1982 ECA convention. First, I discuss how the review of the literature was conducted. Second, I explain some of the special problems of language which lead to perspectival diremption across disciplinary borders. Third, I review the bulk of the literature under the category of “claims made about organizational hierarchies,”; using Jablin's original schema. Fourth, I discuss six promising areas of emerging research which focus on the communicative exchanges within organizations. Finally, I conclude with three recommendations concerning how research can be productively conducted and reported in the future.

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