Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
10.1177/0021943604271958
Forman,
Markus
OF BUSINESS
/ COLLABORATION,
COMMUNICATION
COMMUNICATION, TECHNOLOGY
RESEARCH ON COLLABORATION,
BUSINESS COMMUNICATION,
AND TECHNOLOGY:
Reflections on an Interdisciplinary
Academic Collaboration
Janis Forman
University of California, Los Angeles
M. Lynne Markus
Bentley College
Interdisciplinary research is often recommended and occasionally studied, but little has been written
about the personal, practical, and methodological issues involved in doing it. In this article, the authors
describe one particular research collaboration between a business communication scholar and an information systems researcher. They present their observations about the political pitfalls and personal benefits of their interdisciplinary collaboration. As they attempt to generalize from their experience, the
authors conclude that politics in the broadest sense of the term is the most critical challenge to the
conduct of interdisciplinary research.
Keywords: collaboration; interdisciplinary; computer-supported writing; management communication; information systems
Following publication of the Forum in the January 2004 issue of the Journal of
Business Communication (JBC), the topic of collaborative writing again comes to
the pages of JBC. Although enough research has been done on the topic to warrant a
review (Forman, 2004; Thompson, 2001), important areas of collaborative writing
research remain relatively underexplored. One such area is interdisciplinary academic collaborations on the topic of collaborative writing.
Janis Forman (Ph.D., Rutgers University, 1980) is director of management communication and an
adjunct full professor of management in the UCLA Anderson School of Management at the University of
California, Los Angeles. M. Lynne Markus (Ph.D., Case Western Reserve University, 1979) is trustee
professor of management in the Management Department at Bentley College. The authors would like to
thank the following people for their assistance with this article: Marjorie Horton (The Center for
Machine Intelligence), Allen S. Lee (Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business), Wanda
Orlikowski (MIT Sloan School of Management), Priscilla Rogers (The University of Michigan School of
Business Adminstration), Barbara Shwom (Northwestern Universitys writing programs), and JoAnne
Yates (MIT Sloan School of Management). Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed
to Dr. Janis Forman, 110 Westwood Plaza, Suite 420, Box 951481, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1481; e-mail:
Janis.forman@anderson.ucla.edu.
Journal of Business Communication, Volume 42, Number 1, January 2005 78-102
DOI: 10.1177/0021943604271958
2005 by the Association for Business Communication
79
The core and boundaries of the academic fields of business communication and
information systems are hotly contested. (See, for example, Blyler, 1995, Forman,
1998, and Smeltzer, 1993, on business communication, and Benbasat & Zmud,
2003, and Briggs, Nunamaker, & Sprague, 1999/2000, on information systems.)
Each field issues periodic calls for diversity and openness to other points of view.
And each field has periodic crises of faith in which members wonder if the field will
ever achieve disciplinary status. (See Dulek, 1993, Graham & Thralls, 1998, Rentz,
1993, and Shaw, 1993, on business communication and Banville & Landry, 1989,
Baskerville & Myers, 2002, and Benbasat & Weber, 1996, on information systems.) It is not our intention in this article to engage these concerns, but it is important to understand that interdisciplinary conflicts can arise to some extent even in
80
collaborations among the members of the same field. Indeed, across two fields the
clash of thought worlds can be much greater, even when they share the common
denominator of business.
By the discipline of business communication, we include those research questions, theoretical concerns, and methodological practices that are found in articles
published by the major journals, namely, Business Communication Quarterly, the
Journal of Business Communication, the Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Management Communication Quarterly, and Technical Communication Quarterly. By the early 1990s, some of the leading scholars in business communication strongly advocated opening research in the discipline to outside
influences. This rhetoric of interdisciplinarityexperts public statements about
the need to include other disciplines in the study of business communication, and
public acknowledgment of the goodness of inclusivenesstook center stage in
Larry Smeltzer and James Suchans introduction to the 1991 special issue of JBC
on theory in the discipline: Business communication research continues to represent a pastiche of theoretical perspectives borrowed from organizational behavior,
speech communication, rhetoric, composition, organizational communication,
marketing, international business, and a number of other areas (p. 181).
Other scholars followed suit, especially in the 1993 special issue of JBC on business communication as a discipline. (See, in particular, Gary Shaw, 1993, on business communication as a hybrid discipline based upon the fields of communication, management, and rhetoric.) Interest in the topic deepened in the late 1990s and
the first decade of the new century. For example, Margaret Baker Graham and
Charlotte Thralls (1998) discussed the interdisciplinary dimensions of the field as a
central concern in the formation of the discipline, as did Priscilla Rogers (2001) in
her Outstanding Researcher Award lecture given at the 2000 Association for Business Communication Conference and those who commented on her presentation in
a later issue of JBC. (See Bargiela-Chiappini & Nickerson, 2001; Ryan, 2001a,
2001b; Wardrope, 2001, for the commentary.)
Information systems (IS) started as an area of interest at the intersection of
computer science, management science, and organizational science (Culnan &
Swanson, 1986). Over the years, the field has also drawn in other perspectives,
notably psychology, economics, and strategy. Among the leading journals in the
field today are Management Information Systems Quarterly, Information Systems
Research, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, and Journal of Management Information Systems. As technology developed, emerging challenges
linked to the advances in technology often lead to calls for the importation of yet
more perspectives. For example, electronic commerce has led many IS researchers
to explore the marketing and supply chain literatures. Just as frequently, fears of
fragmentation stimulate calls for stronger boundaries and a more stable core
(Banville & Landry, 1989; Benbasat & Zmud, 2003).
Researchers who hope to bridge two fields as different as business communication and information systems face a double challenge. Not only must they reconcile
81
the conflicting voices within one community of scholars, but they must also find a
way to understand the conflicts in another. How can a researcher who has already
studied the constituent disciplines of business communicationcomposition, rhetoric, organizational communication, among othersalso achieve competence in
the relevant constituent disciplines of information systemscomputer science,
operations research, management science, and organizational behavior, among
othersor vice versa? Is the need to bring in still other disciplines not simply too
much to ask of specialists in interdisciplinary fields who enter a new research
domain?
Clearly, interdisciplinary academic collaborations are one way to bring the perspectives of different disciplines to bear on complex, multifaceted research topics.
But despite considerable research on academic collaboration and communication
(see, for instance, Galegher, Kraut, & Egido, 1990; Latour & Woolgar, 1979;
OConnor et al., 2003), the rhetoric encouraging interdisciplinary research
(Barton, 2001) has far outstripped the study of such undertakings. Little has been
written about academic research that crosses disciplinary lines. What little there is
suggests that the challenges facing interdisciplinary research teams are great.
OConnor et al. (2003) note that academic environments have pressures that discourage and foil interdisciplinary collaborations. For example, junior faculty pursuing tenure are expected to publish a certain number of articles in the high-ranking
journals of their specific field. Interdisciplinary collaboration appears to many to be
a highly risky endeavor because the possibility of publication in the high-ranking
journals of ones home discipline may be more difficult for studies that cut across
disciplines than for those that are clearly linked to the home discipline. Should a
junior faculty member manage to achieve a sufficient number of publications in
high-ranking journals, he or she may face an additional hurdle in considering
collaborative interdisciplinary research:
There is no explicit discussion offered regarding the appropriate degrees to which
researchers acting as a team should influence one anothers thinking, when in the
process such interaction should take place . . . , or what the best mechanisms are at
different points in the process for engaging in such interaction. (OConnor et al.,
2003, pp. 353-354)
At the end of the road, the potential rewardswith an emphasis on potentialinclude a richer understanding of complex phenomena but at the cost of
time spent learning to work collaboratively across disciplinary boundaries.
One way to close the gap between the rhetoric and the practice of interdisciplinary academic collaborations is through stories. These stories, we argue, can give
substance to the rhetoric of interdisciplinary collaboration while suggesting problems in its theory and practice. (In his Outstanding Researcher Award lecture given
at the 2003 Association for Business Communication Conference, Jim Suchan,
2004, urged researchers and practitioners to begin telling their stories as an
approach to developing knowledge in the discipline.) In this article, we offer our
82
own story of interdisciplinary collaboration for a multiyear research study of information technology and collaborative writing involving the collaboration of a
business communication specialist and a researcher in information systems.
We begin with a narrative of our collaboration, written (except for minor editing) in 1993, a few years after our joint study, conducted between 1985 and 1987,
was concluded. This narrative describes the study, how we worked together, the
written products of the study, and our contemporaneous observations about the factors that spawned and shaped our collaboration and our assessment of its benefits.
Then we revisit this story from the perspective of 2004, considering the issues that
arise in interdisciplinary collaboration more generallyespecially the politics of
the academyand conclude with suggestions for additional research.
Our collaboration involved a 2-year study of information technology use in collaborative writing. In the first year of the study (1985-1986), we closely observed
teams of master of business administration (MBA) students while they conducted
6-month consulting projects that culminated in strategic reports for real client organizations. As a result of our observations, we identified many problems in collaboration attributable to poor group dynamics, writing problems, and lack of appropriate information technologies. In the 2nd year of the study (1986-1987), we selected
a package of information technologies that addressed, we believed, many of the
technology needs identified during our initial investigation. We solicited four
teams of volunteers, had them trained in the use of information technology, and
observed how they collaborated in their consulting and writing tasks and how they
used technology while doing so. (See Figure 1 for details of the project rationale,
the groups studied, the information technology used, and the research procedures.)
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Project Rationale
This project focuses on the uses of computer-mediated group writing in the managerial problemsolving, decision-making, and communication tasks that take place in the Field Study process. Computer-mediated group writing includes electronic messaging, computer conferencing, and group writing
software. Since Field Study resembles the small group project activity that many managers perform,
Field Study research provides an ideal testbed for exploring ways the new information technology can
contribute to overall project success.
Dr. Forman will focus upon how computer-mediated technology influences the creation of two groupwritten documents for Field Study, namely the communications component and the final report.
Professor Markus will look at 1) the different material constraints and enablements of traditional versus computer-mediated group writing and 2) the influence of computer-mediated technology on the time
use and interaction patterns of Field Study teams.
The thesis of this study is that computer-mediated technology will enhance group problem-solving,
decision-making, and communication tasks, but will require new users of the technology to master a set
of new skills to use it effectively. (from a joint-authored memo requesting funding for the study, October
10, 1985)
Research Procedures
Four field study teams (three teams of four students, one team of three students) and their faculty advisors volunteered to participate in the study during the fall and winter quarters of the 1986-1987 academic
year. In return for the loan of the equipment and training in its use, participants granted permission for
researchers to observe the teams at work; to record or collect oral, written, and computer communications; and to interview them individually 4 times over the course of the study. At the midpoint of the
project, we conducted taped group interviews evaluating each teams interpersonal process during
the creation of an early deliverable, a five-page proposal. Participants were not required to use the studysupplied technology except to demonstrate competence in its use. Our contract with participants did not
enable us to coerce them to use the technology, and we had limited reward power over them.
Figure 1. Our Collaborative Research Project
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85
Article
abstract
Journal
where
published
Intended
audience
Research
questions
Article title
Table 1.
Lynnes Publication
Janiss Publication
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ware. The study with Janis offered the opportunity to work with a subject matter
expert in group writing, and Lynne thought that the very subject matter of the study
of groupware seemed to demand a collaborative effort. Finally, from a pragmatic
point of view, she knew that if she did not collaborate, she would have had to choose
a more bounded project, such as an analysis of the uses of electronic mail in an
organization, rather than the more challenging implementation study that she conducted with Janis.
In forming a research partnership, we agreed that we represented different disciplines in several ways. We had different academic training, had read different literatures, and used different research methodologies in our earlier separate studies. We
also had different professional affiliations and, as a result, we attended different
conferences and socialized with professionals in different discourse communities.
Within the Graduate School of Management (GSM) at University of California,
Los Angeles (UCLA), we were located in different units that had different objectives, and we taught subjects that occupied different places in the curriculum.
(Today, GSM is known as UCLA Anderson School of Management.)
We also recognized a number of similar disciplinary and professional concerns
without which we would not have shared enough common ground to undertake a
joint research venture. Both of us believe that knowledge is not objective, nor completely generalizable across individual cases. (On the continuum of research
approaches that Blyler, 1995, presents as a single one of functionalist versus interpretive, both of us fall somewhere in the middle.) As researchers and instructors in a
school of business, we were both interested in our students becoming leaders in the
business world and in their development of useful skills as well as interpretive
frameworks based in specific disciplines.
Institutional Support for Our Collaboration
Despite our predisposition toward interdisciplinary collaboration, this collaboration might not have occurred without institutional support in the form of research
funding and without the institutional placement of our respective disciplines. In the
mid-1980s, GSM had received a grant from IBM to conduct applied research on IS
and the education of managers. The grant provided the opportunity for the collaboration and for the design of the specific project in question, involving a technology
implementation and intervention. Because Lynne could calculate the amount of
work necessary to design and execute an effective intervention, she would never
even have dreamed of proposing one as a faculty member in a management school
in the absence of UCLAs receiving the IBM grant, which made funds available for
computer equipment. (She might also have conducted this kind of project if she had
been working for a computer or software product development firm, where equipment resources would presumably be available, but, of course, that is a different
story.)
88
Other institutional arrangements also supported work such as ours. Both IS and
the teaching of business writing were housed in UCLAs management school,
GSM. In all likelihood, our study of the four student teams would not have occurred
had business writing been located in a traditional English department, that is, in a
literature-centered English department with little disciplinary diversity. In such
departments, interdisciplinary problem-centered research such as ours is rarely
funded. Furthermore, as a member of an English department, Janis would not
have had occasion to meet colleagues in IS, who typically belong to management
departments, for conversations about concerns shared across the disciplines. In
this instance, the shared concern was technology and group work. Moreover, if Janis had belonged to a traditional English department, her thinking about
computers and group writing would more likely have been influenced by humanities scholarshipthe disciplinary authority of literary theory and especially of
postmodernismthan by research on small group dynamics and IS. In the mid1980s, none of the IS literature appeared in business communication journals. Similarly, had Lynne been teaching in a school of computer science, library science, or
department of industrial engineering, there would have been considerably less
opportunity for her to interact with someone of Janiss background. We surmise,
then, that departmental goals and configurations, including the literal proximity to
one another of researchers from different disciplines, can be powerful agents in the
shaping of interdisciplinary research.
89
90
tion, respectively, would evaluate our joint research. To simulate this situation we
gave an IS expert (an experienced journal editor) Janiss published article to
review as though she were submitting it for publication in a mainstream IS journal, and we asked a business communication expert to do the same with Lynnes
article. The results of these reviews, written in 1993 and summarized in Figure 2,
speak for themselves.
In both cases, our single-authored articles were unacceptable to members of
each others field, because these papers were insensitive to a host of audience
issues, including lack of focus on topics central to the journals readership and failure to explain literature cited from the others discipline or to cite literature appropriate to the disciplinary domain of the journal. In Janiss case, the reviewer noted
that she
has done little to establish any ties between her research and the current body of IS
research. Relevant to the failure of the four teams to use technology successfully,
for example, are the literatures of IS implementation, IS development, and CSCW.
According to the reviewer of Lynnes article, it seems to assume that the adoption of technology is an end in itself. Our field [business communication] is
more concerned with ways in which people adopt and adapt technology to meet
or expand their communication objectives. Viewed from a rhetorical perspective, these fundamental differences confirm Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecas
(1969) assertion that there are agreements that are peculiar to the members of a
particular discipline and there is a discourse characteristic of each discipline
that summarize[s] an aggregate of acquired knowledge, rules, and conventions (p. 99). In sum, each article faced rejection in the others discipline on the
basis of differences about what issues are worthy of investigation and what
constitutes appropriate evidence and its presentation.
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92
Although the article does an excellent job of contextualizing its issues within a body of current
research, most of that research is from outside the fields our journal covers: business, technical, organization, or management communication. Very few of the references are from communication journals or
books; they are weighted heavily toward information systems and information technology. This poses
two problems for the article. Readers of our journal are unlikely to be familiar with any of the theories
presented or the researchers or research studies used as evidence. In addition, readers will have to work
hard to see the relevance of the research to communication issues.
The article assumes a knowledge of certain concepts in the communication technology research that
is not appropriate for the business communication audience. For example, the article assumes that everyone will be familiar with the concept of discretionary database, a term from outside the communication
fields.
Currently the article seems to assume that the adoption of technology is an end in itself. Our field is
more concerned with the ways in which people adopt and adapt technology to meet or expand their
communication objectives. The article should highlight the communication issues in technology and perhaps, in its conclusion, address the benefits of introducing asynchronous technologies into the workplace.
Figure 2 (continued)
93
constitutes a tacit knowledge of the other discipline that cannot be easily acquired
by other means, such as by intensive reading of the literature in the others field.
Both this kind of tacit knowledge and work with colleagues from other disciplines
may be able to mitigate the hazards of wholesale, naive borrowing from other
disciplines and the tendency to overgeneralize theories from other disciplines
beyond their original intended application (see Rose, 1988, and Forman, 1998, on
this problem). At best, in the words of a collaborator from another business communication/IS team, the specialist from the other discipline can become an invisible author (M. S. Horton, personal communication, March 31, 1992), an internalized voice that opens up new methods of inquiry, new problem-solving approaches,
in work that follows an interdisciplinary effort.
How Typical Was Our Collaboration?
Reflecting in 1993 on our interdisciplinary collaboration naturally raised the
question of how it compared to other collaborations we had participated in as well
as to those of other business communication/IS teams. Was our interdisciplinary
work limited or extensive? From one perspective, our collaboration was extensive
in that we shared many aspects of the study, including lengthy analysis of the data.
But from another perspective, unlike other collaborations we had engaged in
(Forman & Katsky, 1986; Markus & Connolly, 1990), our collaboration was limited in that each of us developed a separate set of research questions and retained
our own intellectual property in the form of separate publications. Moreover, in the
generation of these single-authored publications, each of us subordinated the
others work both in the argument and in the writing process. In addition, our reading of each others manuscripts was limited to a review for readability and for
accuracy of details drawn from our pooled data.
One explanation for our decision to publish separately lies in the immaturity of
combined research efforts in business communication and IS at the time of our
study. There were, in fact, no other studies published in the late 1980s that represented this kind of collaboration and, hence, there were no theoretical bases or practices that we could build upon. This contrasts to the state of research by the mid1990s; collaborations between researchers in the two disciplines who publish
together, in particular the work of Priscilla S. Rogers and Marjorie S. Horton and
that of JoAnne Yates and Wanda J. Orlikowski, as well as studies on technology and
writing that link written communication to other disciplines (Ferrara, Brunner, &
Whittemore, 1991), offered precedent for further interdisciplinary work.
Negotiation Between Collaborators
Of course, collaborative research even within a single discipline is characterized
by negotiation, as collaborators Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford (1983, 1990)
reported in the mid-1980s and early 1990s in their discussions of the differences in
each others composing processes and in their routines for conducting research.
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Revisiting our project in 2004, we find that the politics of such effortspolitics
in the broadest sense of the termstrikes us as the most critical challenge to the
conduct of such research. Interdisciplinary collaborators must conduct their work
within the context of the opportunities and constraints offered by institutions and
disciplines.
Institutional Enabling of and Constraints
Upon Interdisciplinary Collaboration
Interdisciplinary collaboration is embedded in and often deeply influenced by
the institutional settings in which it occurs. As discussed earlier, our placement
within a management department, even the location of our offices within close
proximity to each other, encouraged discussion between us, and eventually, a formal research project. Orlikowski and Yates view this issue similarly, although in
95
their case they were and are members of a single departmentan incentive for joint
researchbut are located in different buildingsa constraint, but one they are able
to overcome (W. J. Orlikowski & J. Yates, personal communication, July 16, 2004).
Placement in an interdisciplinary program, think tank, or research center including business communication experts and experts from other disciplines would
make collaboration even easier, we believe, because the raison detre of such organizational units is facilitation of interdisciplinary work, and the reward structure in
such units favors interdisciplinary efforts. This incentive for interdisciplinary
research has been the case for the Orlikowski-Yates team over the past decade: the
Center for Coordination Science, which had funded each of us individually before
we began working together, enthusiastically supported our joint work (W. J.
Orlikowski & J. Yates, personal communication, July 16, 2004). Moreover, this
team is now 4 years into a 5-year National Science Foundation grant focused
explicitly on interdisciplinary work.
But institutions can constrain interdisciplinary collaboration as well. For example, Rogers notes that since the early 1990s at her home institution,
our two deans . . . seem to be moving faculty together again by disciplinary group
as offices become open. Meanwhile, interdisciplinary research and pedagogy is
less a topic of discussion, and faculty teams for projects have been reduced to one
primary and one secondary faculty member in the discipline directly related to the
nature of the project. (P. S. Rogers, personal communication, July 1, 2004)
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2003, Fitzgerald, 2003, Paul, 2002, and Perry, 2003, on IS). In fact, by the early
1990s, cross citations had begun to appear in the major publications of each discipline. At present, IS seems a strong potential partner for business communication
researchers as the importance of electronic messaging and groupware to writing
processes and products is recognized (Lowry et al., 2004; E. M. Rogers &
Allbritton, 1995). Moreover, interdisciplinary partnerships may be able to bypass
the gatekeeping of single disciplines by publishing their work in the journals of
fields that are explicitly interdisciplinary, as is the case for the Orlikowski-Yates
team:
We chose to publish most of our work not in disciplinary journals, but in the interdisciplinary field of Organization Studies, in such outlets as ASQ, AMR, and
Organization Science. For both of us, these journals were perceived by Sloans
interdisciplinary Personnel Committee as more prestigious than the disciplinary
journals of IS and particularly of management communication. (W. J. Orlikowski
& J. Yates, personal communication, July 16, 2004)
97
from Janiss article indicates (see Table 1), she drew upon the literatures of several
disciplines: from composition and rhetoric (references to audience analysis); from
social psychology and the management of small groups (references to leadership
and group conflict); from IS (references to computer policies and practices and to
conflicting hardware and software needs); and from composition (references to
pedagogy). On the other hand, Lynnes article (see Table 1) contains a central argument that is placed in an ongoing set of propositions about technology and group
work within IS. As she writes, the paper compares actual observations with the
theory-based expectationstheories that are widely accepted within IS. On the
basis of these abstracts, sociologist Murray Davis would say that IS is a more
mature discipline than is business communication, at least in terms of Lynnes argument as opposed to Janiss (at the time when the research was conducted): Lynnes
propositions confirm, extend, or work against accepted theories within IS, some of
which synthesized work in other disciplines. Her baseline is the taken-for-granted
assumption of the intellectual specialty itself (Davis, 1971, p. 330). By contrast,
Janiss work reflects thinking in a less mature discipline as far as computing and
group work are concerned. There are no established propositions in business
communication that her article addresses.
The relative maturity of the two disciplines partially explains why we decided to
work with some independence within the context of our collaborative project and
may suggest what motivates other collaborators to choose a similar pattern for
working together. As management theorist Warren Bennis (1956) has noted, interdisciplinary research may be discouraged by
the difficulty of sharing and combining concepts between disciplines at varying
stages of development. Interdisciplinary research infers a contemporaneity between
cultural products. . . . It may be that an attempt to cross disciplines at a conceptual
level may be destined for failure because of their lack of contemporaneity.
(p. 227).
NEW DIRECTIONS
This article has been our attempt to describe one extended interdisciplinary project and to comment on it from the perspective of 1993, the completion of our
research publications, and from the perspective of 2004more than a decade later.
In his Outstanding Researcher Award lecture given at the 2003 Association for
Business Communication Conference, Jim Suchan appealed to researchers to
begin telling their stories, arguing that stories are a legitimate and undervalued
method for advancing knowledge in the field as well as an approach that unearths
data and insights that would be otherwise overlooked. At a minimum, we hope that
our example will prompt those who conduct interdisciplinary collaborations to
begin telling their stories, especially as these stories anchor, in specific cases,
notions of what constitutes knowledge and knowledge making in business commu-
98
nication and offer opportunities to test and define what is meant by interdisciplinary research in the discipline.
99
and for what reasons? Will there come a point at which openness causes the
breakdown of the field and the constitution of new ones born of collaborative
interdisciplinary effort and the recognition of a fundamental commonality
between once distinct disciplines? In other words, will business communication
experts build bridges to other disciplines or radically restructure the discipline?
(See Klein, 1990, pp. 27-28.)
The role of publication outlets and institutional politics: Because funding
agencies, educational institutions, and publication outlets can confer status and
authority, what role will they play in the fortunes of business communication?
The most long-standing and prolific of the teamsOrlikowski-Yateshas published most of their work in interdisciplinary journals. These journals are highly
respected by their home institution and also forced/enabled us to merge our
perspective and develop a more thoroughly combined one (W. J. Orlikowski &
J. Yates, personal communication, July 16, 2004).
Stories of interdisciplinary teams will help to address these issues. Analysis of
such stories, especially of the kinds of sharing that occur among researchers from
different disciplines, may help specify what is meant by saying that business communication is open to interdisciplinary approaches.
Beyond the telling of stories about interdisciplinary work as a way to address the
questions identified above, we offer two other recommendations: ethnographic
research on the work of interdisciplinary teams and cocitation studies of articles
published in business communication journals. As for the former, investigators
observations and interviews of interdisciplinary business communication and IS
teams (or of business communication researchers and researchers from any other
discipline) promise to yield insights about the nature of such research and the theoretical borrowings and transformations that characterize the growth of business
communication as a result of such collaboration. Research by sociologists of the
natural sciences may offer models for such study of collaborative interdisciplinary
research, in particular Latour and Woolgars (1979) participant-observer study of
team research in a scientific lab. As for the latter, researchers and theorists within IS
may provide business communication specialists with good examples (e.g., Culnan
& Swanson, 1986). Tracking those instances when a researcher cites any work of
any given author along with the work of any other author in a new document
(Culnan, 1987, p. 343) assists in determining the disciplines outside IS that are
influencing its growth. The same kind of tracking has begun for business communication (Reinsch & Lewis, 1993). Such analysis results in information about the various disciplines that have influenced business communication at different times and
in the work of different researchers and scholars, and might form the basis for historical analysis of business communications relationship to other disciplines.
Taken as a whole, personal stories, outside investigators ethnographic studies, and
cocitation analysis may illuminate how knowledge in business communication is
socially constructed, especially as this construction is influenced by outside experts.
100
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