Convergence and Commonality Challenge Business Communication Research: Outstanding Researcher Lecture

Abstract

Outstanding Researcher Lecture Just over a decade ago, in 1990, MIT Professor JoAnne Yates became the first recipient of the Association for Business Communication (ABC) Outstanding Researcher Award. The announcement, at this ABC conference in Atlanta, of Jone Rymer as the 11th recipient not only marks a decade for the award but also represents our hope for research in the millennium. It seems a fitting time, therefore, to consider some ways that our past research equips us to tacide research challenges facing us now. Indeed, as a representative of the decade past, let me suggest challenges for consideration, one I'll call convergence, the other commonality. Convergence and commonality, I'll suggest, challenge us to let go of the search for disciplinary identity, to stop seeking uniformity in methods, to forget about the idea of having a common institutional home, and rather, to use our diversity and concentrate our research efforts more deliberately around the purpose we share. Convergence Two roads in a yellow wood, wrote the American poet Robert Frost (1920). sorry I could not travel both, he continued, But be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as long as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other just as fair, . . . And that has made all the difference. (p. 9) From Frost's perspective the roads diverged, requiring a choice. Standing at the same fork in the road and looking the other way, however, presents quite a different picture. Turned around, Frost's two roads diverged are two roads converged, roads coming together. As this ABC conference is meeting in CNN Center, it seems appropriate to consider what means to news professionals these days. Convergence in the news involves an intermingling of three highly diverse media platforms--print, television, and the Internet. The Tampa Tribune, WFLA-TV Channel 8, and their online sites, for example, recently moved in together under one glass roof, a $40 million temple to which they call the Newscenter (Smith, 2000). More than simply bricks, mortar, and lots of glass, however, this convergence is seen as a revolution in the news business, a revolution involving a new togetherness that's thrusting seasoned professionals into roles, involving unfamiliar processes and different products, requiring and flexible competencies, many of which must be learned quickly on the job. In addition to preparing a 30-minute TV special, a news anchor may be asked to provide text for the online site, then turn the same story into copy suitable for the morning newspaper, even if it means scooping her TV special slated to appear sometime later. [It's] a nightmare, said anchorwoman Gayle Sierens, because it's not what I do (Smith, 2000). When it comes to our communication research endeavors, convergence may not seem like a totally idea. We've been navigating multiple disciplines and diverse methods for some time now. In fact, our diversity in backgrounds, cultures, approaches, and institutions has become central to our identity. As our ABC mission states, business communication is interdisciplinary, drawing theory, research methods, and knowledge from disciplines as diverse as management, rhetoric, organizational behavior, composition, speech communication, mass communication, psychology, linguistics, information technology, education, and history among others (ABC, 2000; see also Locker, 1993, 1998). At the 1994 Research Think Tank, held in conjunction with the ABC Conference in San Diego, participants were asked to name sources that had greatly influenced their research. Their responses ranged from Faigley to Fielden; from Maslow to Tufte; from Hirokawa and Poole to Hofstede; from Daft and Lengel to Ede and Lunsford (for a complete list see Rogers, 1995). …