Communicating a New ABC: Advocacy, Partnerships, and Implementing Change

Abstract

In their speeches at the October 2000 meeting of the Association for Business Communication, Paula Pomerenke (Outstanding Teacher, 2000), Priscilla S. Rogers (Outstanding Researcher, 2000), and Gail Fann Thomas (Chair, Research Committee) made an impact in a way I have seldom encountered. Professor Pomerenke, in particular, challenged us as an organization. I encourage JBC readers to reflect personally on these recently published addresses. What I will do in making a brief reply is to reiterate some key points and, hopefully, respond to challenges issued by the speakers to the ABC. Paula Pomerenke (2001) spoke about formalizing support of Plain Language across the continents and about ABC's continuing need to strengthen relationships with practitioners. She recalled Jan Ulijn's Outstanding Researcher Award lecture from the previous year, in which he talked about ways to make research more relevant to business and teaching. Is research based on real life or simulation? He asked, Will the business community listen to us? Paula adds emphasis to Ulijn's answer in her text, Yes, if we listen to them! (2000, as quoted in Pomerenke, 2001, p. 8). For several years, I have been active on a committee within ABC designed to engage business practitioners in the work of our Association. The Business Practices Committee urges ABC members to continue to listen to practitioners. Invite practitioners to ABC regional meetings and the annual convention. In so doing, you will actively participate in the work of helping each of us shed the basic skills yoke (Suchan & Dulek, as quoted in Pomerenke, p. 9) that, as Paula says, confines our work as business communication professionals. Another phrase that resonated with me was Paula's plea, Cut us (Pomerenke, 2001, p. 9). Not only do business communication professionals need to be cut free from artificial lenses that constrict the vision of our major stakeholders; we need, as Paula says, to be cut free from the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business's (AACSB) inclusion of business communication in the same category as business education. In her words, Until we have our own AACSB classification, we will continue to be considered weak and vulnerable (p. 11). Professor Rogers (2001) underscored the problem of finding a home when she talked about her quest for professional nurturance. There is a paradox in that while we may be embracing what she calls convergence and becoming more comfortable with our plurality (pp. 14-16), deans and departmental decision-makers are seemingly less comfortable with broad commitments to teaching communication within the business school curriculum. How many people do you know who have ma de shifts within programs, departments, or universities? Professionally speaking, many good programs and people are dead or in jeopardy. The ABC can provide us the political leverage to assert our discipline's merits independent of business education. But where do we start to argue the case for independent classification within AACSB? Professor Thomas (2001) stated in her address that we are not the only profession having to rethink and reshape its identity (p. 27). She suggested that as an organization we follow a twofold approach: (a) focus on our common purpose of making a difference in the lives of business professionals and (b) think strategically about our place within academe. In the months I have been considering the challenges proposed by the several speakers in Atlanta, I have found myself looking more and more to the precedent established by the American Accounting Association (AAA). [1] Accountancy professionals have a strong record of recognizing the value and place of communication instruction within academe, as well as in business and professional settings. Notable about AAA is the organization's ability to support business communication in both its sponsored publications and its national teaching agenda. …