Medieval origins of corporate communication

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide corporate communication educators and practitioners with historical information about the origins of their field, so that they may have a greater understanding of their own roles in the continuum of communication theory and practice.Design/methodology/approach – Research into secondary and primary literature on the development of the medieval art of letter‐writing, ars dictaminis, frames an analysis of the career and influence of Thomas Sampson, a fourteenth‐century teacher of ars dictaminis and other business subjects. Sampson's textbook, Method of Letter‐writing, is compared to another example of the genre, The Principles of Letter‐writing, written some 250 years earlier by Anonymous of Bologna and published in a widely available current textbook.Findings – Compared to The Principles of Letter‐writing, Sampson's text is direct, concrete, and demonstrates a high degree of audience awareness. Instead of separating theory from practice, Sampson integrates t...