ABSTRACT
People have studied and discussed communication processes within dominant organizations since antiquity. Because of rapid social and organizational change, however, great pressure has been placed on organizational communication researchers to continually develop useful concepts and studies to match the complex interactions of contemporary workplaces. From the time of its formal introduction in the 1950s, the area of organizational communication has “borrowed” heavily from numerous academic disciplines (e.g., industrial psychology, social psychology, organizational behavior, administrative science, contemporary rhetorical theory, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, political science, and the philosophy of science; Putnam & Cheney, 1985; Redding & Tompkins, 1988). Moreover, scholars from a variety of disciplines conduct research on organizational communication. Consequently, literature abounds on historical, theoretical, and methodological issues. Rather than providing a thorough overview of relevant literature, this chapter instead briefl y discusses selected theoretical/conceptual frameworks and related research perspectives and examples relevant to organizational communication.
