ABSTRACT
Communication is a relatively recent academic discipline, and organizational communication has been an important subset of that discipline since 1950. In 1985, the Organizational Communication Division of the International Communication Association established are search task force to identify and critique instruments that had been used in organizational communication research. Five organizational communication practices inhibit the possibility of a complete list. First, organizational communication is a boundary-spanning discipline with very imprecise perimeters. Second, the content of what is covered in organizational communication research is exceedingly broad, yet individual scholars tend to develop specialties on narrow facets of organizational communication. Third, the study of organizations encompasses other aspects of communication, such as interpersonal communication. Fourth, sometimes when researchers develop a good instrument to measure organizational communication, they incorporate it into a proprietary consulting practice rather than report it in academic research journals. Fifth, scholars from many countries develop instruments to measure organizational communication.
