Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The term organizational communication denotes both a field of study and a set of empirical phenomena. The former is a largely US-based subdiscipline of the field of communication studies (though programs are being established in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Europe, and China); the latter refers broadly to the various and complex communication practices of humans engaged in collective, coordinated, and goal-oriented behavior. In simple terms, organizational communication scholars study the dynamic relationships between communication processes and human organizing. Communication is conceived as foundational to, and constitutive of, organizations, while organizations are viewed as relatively enduring structures that are both medium and outcome of communication processes. While research has focused traditionally on corporate organizational forms, recently the field has broadened its scope to study nonprofit and alternative organizations. As a field of study, organizational communication differs in its intellectual origins and current disciplinary matrix from cognate fields such as management, organization studies, and organizational/industrial psychology, though it shares a number of research agendas with these fields. Based in the discipline of communication studies, organizational communication scholars draw on both social scientific and humanistic intellectual traditions, ... log in or subscribe to read full text